“Yet I do not mean to add new terrours to those which have already seized upon Pekuah.  There can be no reason, why spectres should haunt the pyramid more than other places, or why they should have power or will to hurt innocence and purity.  Our entrance is no violation of their privileges; we can take nothing from them, how then can we offend them?”

“My dear Pekuah,” said the princess, “I will always go before you, and Imlac shall follow you.  Remember that you are the companion of the princess of Abissinia.”

“If the princess is pleased that her servant should die,” returned the lady, “let her command some death less dreadful than enclosure in this horrid cavern.  You know, I dare not disobey you:  I must go, if you command me; but, if I once enter, I never shall come back.”

The princess saw that her fear was too strong for expostulation or reproof, and, embracing her, told her, that she should stay in the tent, till their return.  Pekuah was yet not satisfied, but entreated the princess not to pursue so dreadful a purpose, as that of entering the rececess of the pyramid.  “Though I cannot teach courage,” said Nekayah, “I must not learn cowardice; nor leave, at last, undone what I came hither only to do.”

[a] It may not be unacceptable to our readers, to quote, in this place, a stanza, from an Ode to Horror in the Student, ii. 313.  It alludes to the story of a French gentleman, who, going into the catacombs, not far from Cairo, with some Arab guides, was there robbed by them, and left; a huge stone being placed over the entrance.

  What felt the Gallic, traveller,
  When far in Arab desert, drear,
  He found within the catacomb,
  Alive, the terrors of a tomb? 
  While many a mummy, through the shade,
  In hieroglyphic stole arrayed,
  Seem’d to uprear the mystic head,
  And trace the gloom with ghostly tread;
  Thou heard’st him pour the stifled groan,
  Horror! his soul was all thy own!  ED.

[b] See Hibbert’s Philosophy of Apparitions.  It is to be regretted, that
    Coleridge has never yet gratified the wish he professed to feel, in
    the first volume of his Friend, p. 246, to devote an entire work to
    the subject of dreams, visions, ghosts, witchcraft, &c; in it we
    should have had the satisfaction of tracing the workings of a most
    vivid imagination, analyzed by the most discriminating judgment.  See
    Barrow’s sermon on the being of God, proved from supernatural
    effects.  We need scarcely request the reader to bear in mind, that
    Barrow was a mathematician, and one of the most severe of
    reasoners.—­ED.

CHAP.  XXXII.

THEY ENTER THE PYRAMID.

Pekuah descended to the tents, and the rest entered the pyramid:  they passed through the galleries, surveyed the vaults of marble, and examined the chest, in which the body of the founder is supposed to have been reposited.  They then sat down in one of the most spacious chambers, to rest awhile before they attempted to return.