The Mummy's Foot

Gautier spins a deliciously bizarre tale in this 1840 short story, one that captures the Romantics' obsession with the ancient world and the uncanny. A young Parisian purchases a mummified foot from a dusty curiosity shop, thinking it a splendid paperweight. But that night, the foot stirs to life, and the ghost of Princess Hermonthis appears, lamenting her four-thousand-year separation from her royal remains. What follows is a dreamlike journey through a phantasmagoric Paris, the boundaries between living and dead dissolved, until Paul finds himself before Pharaoh himself, proposing marriage with the earnest gallantry of a man who has clearly lost his mind. The Pharaoh's reply is devastating. The story endures because Gautier deploys Gothic atmosphere with a wry smile, mocking his narrator's pretensions while still crafting something genuinely magical and strange.