flew to see her lovers.  It was a lie.  Thais knew well, having often watched her, that her mother practised no magic arts, but that she was eaten up with avarice, and counted all night the gains of the day.  The idle father and the greedy mother let the child live as best it could, like one of the fowls in the poultry-yard.  She became very clever in extracting, one by one, the oboli from the belt of some drunken sailor, and in amusing the drinkers with artless songs and obscene words, the meaning of which she did not know.  She passed from knee to knee, in a room reeking with the odours of fermented drinks and resiny wine-skins; then, her cheeks sticky with beer and pricked by rough beards, she escaped, clutching the oboli in her little hand, and ran to buy honey-cakes from an old woman who crouched behind her baskets under the Gate of the Moon.  Every day the same scenes were repeated, the sailors relating their perilous adventures, then playing at dice or knuckle-bones, and blaspheming the gods, amid their shouting for the best beer of Cilicia.

Every night the child was awakened by the quarrels of the drunkards.  Oyster-shells would fly across the tables, cutting the heads of those they hit, and the uproar was terrible.  Sometimes she saw, by the light of the smoky lamps, the knives glitter, and the blood flow.

It humiliated her to think that the only person who showed her any human kindness in her young days was the mild and gentle Ahmes.  Ahmes, the house-slave, a Nubian blacker than the pot he gravely skimmed, was as good as a long night’s sleep.  Often he would take Thais on his knee, and tell her old tales about underground treasure-houses constructed for avaricious kings, who put to death the masons and architects.  There were also tales about clever thieves who married kings’ daughters, and courtesans who built pyramids.  Little Thais loved Ahmes like a father, like a mother, like a nurse, and like a dog.  She followed the slave into the cellar when he went to fill the amphorae, and into the poultry-yard amongst the scraggy and ragged fowls, all beak, claws, and feathers, who flew swifter than eagles before the knife of the black cook.  Often at night, on the straw, instead of sleeping, he built for Thais little water-mills, and ships no bigger than his hand, with all their rigging.

He had been badly treated by his masters; one of his ears was torn, and his body covered with scars.  Yet his features always wore an air of joyous peace.  And no one ever asked him whence he drew the consolation in his soul, and the peace in his heart.  He was as simple as a child.  As he performed his heavy tasks, he sang, in a harsh voice, hymns which made the child tremble and dream.  He murmured, in a gravely joyous tone—­

“Tell us, Mary, what thou hast seen where thou hast been?  I saw the shroud and the linen cloths, and the angels seated on the tomb.  And I saw the glory of the Risen One.”

She asked him—­