Everyone forgets he was funny. Ha! But he was, and here is the proof, and it is the most ill-tempered thing he ever wrote.
A few gentlemen of Philadelphia get hold of a mummy and do what any right-thinking man of 1845 would do, which is invite friends over, unwrap him on the dining table, and apply a galvanic battery to see what happens. What happens is that Count Allamistakeo sits up, extremely annoyed, and asks what exactly they think they are doing.
And then — this is the part — he stays for the argument. The Americans start bragging. Democracy! Steam engines! Architecture, medicine, the age of progress! And the Count listens politely to every boast and dismantles it item by item, because Egypt tried all of that thousands of years ago, thank you, and got better results, and had the good sense to stop. Thirteen provinces attempted a republic once. It went badly. He was there.
They cannot win a single point. Not one. Seven hundred years dead and he is still the best-read man in the room.
The narrator, thoroughly beaten, goes home and decides to get himself embalmed for a couple of centuries, mostly to escape his creditors. And who among us could argue with that?
