第18章 THE PAPYRUS(5)

Guessing that Thais would soon develop into a most beautiful woman, she taught her--with the help of a whip--music and prosody, and she flogged with leather thongs those beautiful legs, when they did not move in time to the strains of the cithara.Her son--a decrepit abortion, of no age and no sex--ill-treated the child, on whom he vented the hate he had for all womankind.Like the dancing-girls whose grace he affected, he knew, and taught Thais, the art of pantomime, and how to mimic, by expression, gesture, and attitude, all human passions, and more especially the passions of love.He was a clever master, though he disliked his work; but he was jealous of his pupil, and as soon as he discovered that she was born to give men pleasure, he scratched her cheeks, pinched her arms, or pricked her legs, as a spiteful girl would have done.Thanks, however, to his lessons, she quickly became an excellent musician, pantomimist, and dancer.The brutality of her master did not at all surprise her; it seemed natural to her to be badly treated.She even felt some respect for the old woman, who knew music and drank Greek wine.Moeroe, when she came to Antioch, praised her pupil to the rich merchants of the city who gave banquets, both as a dancer and a flute-player.Thais danced and pleased.She accompanied the rich bankers, when they left the table, into the shady groves on the banks of the Orontes.She gave herself to all, for she knew nothing of the price of love.But one night that she had danced before the most fashionable young men of the city, the son of the pro-consul came to her, radiant with youth and pleasure, and said, in a voice that seemed redolent of kisses--"Why am I not, Thais, the wreath which crowns your hair, the tunic which enfolds your beautiful form, the sandal on your pretty foot? Iwish you to tread me under foot as a sandal; I wish my caresses to be your tunic and your wreath.Come, sweet girl! come to my house, and let us forget the world."She looked at him whilst he was speaking, and saw that he was handsome.Suddenly she felt a cold sweat on her face.She turned green as grass; she reeled; a cloud descended before her eyes.He again implored her to come with him, but she refused.His ardent looks, his burning words were vain, and when he took her in his arms to try and drag her away, she pushed him off rudely.Then he implored her, and shed tears.But a new, unknown, and invincible passion dominated her heart, and she still resisted.

"What madness!" said the guests."Lollius is noble, handsome, and rich, and a dancing-girl treats him with scorn!"Lollius returned home alone that night, quite love-sick.He came in the morning, pale and red-eyed, and hung flowers at the dancing-girl's door.

But Thais was frightened and troubled; she avoided Lollius, and yet he was continually in her mind.She suffered, and she did not know the cause of her complaint.She wondered why she had thus changed, and why she was melancholy.She recoiled from all her lovers; they were hateful to her.She loathed the light of day, and lay on her bed all day, sobbing, and with her head buried in the pillows.Lollius contrived to gain admittance, and came many times, but neither his pleadings nor his execrations had any effect on the obdurate girl.In his presence, she was as timid as a virgin, and would say nothing but--"I will not! I will not!"

But at the end of a fortnight she gave in, for she knew that she loved him; she went to his house and lived with him.They were supremely happy.They passed their days shut up together, gazing into each other's eyes, and babbling a childish jargon.In the evening, they walked on the lonely banks of the Orontes, and lost themselves in the laurel woods.Sometimes they rose at dawn, to go and gather hyacinths on the slopes of Sulpicus.They drank from the same cup, and he would take a grape from between her lips with his mouth.

Moeroe came to Lollius, and cried and shrieked that Thais should be restored to her.

"She is my daughter," she said, "my daughter, who has been torn from me.My perfumed flower--my own bowels--!"Lollius gave her a large sum of money, and sent her away.But, as she came back to demand some more gold staters, the young man had her put in prison, and the magistrates having discovered that she was guilty of many crimes, she was condemned to death, and thrown to the wild beasts.

Thais loved Lollius with all the passion of her mind, and the bewilderment of innocence.She told him, and told him truly from the bottom of her heart--"I have never loved any one but you."

Lollius replied--

"You are not like any other woman."

The spell lasted six months, but it broke at last.Thais suddenly felt that her heart was empty and lonely.Lollius no longer seemed the same to her.She thought--"What can have thus changed me in an instant? How is it that he is now like any other man, and no longer like himself?"She left him, not without a secret desire to find Lollius again in another, as she no longer found him in himself.She thought it would be less dull to live with someone she had never loved, than with one she had ceased to love.She appeared, in the company of rich debauchees, at those sacred feasts at which naked virgins danced in the temples, and troops of courtesans swam across the Orontes.She took part in all the pleasures of the fashionable and depraved city;and she assiduously frequented the theatres, at which clever mimes from all countries performed amidst the applause of a crowd greedy for excitement.

She carefully observed the mimes, dancers, comedians, and especially the women, who in tragedies represented goddesses in love with young men, or mortals loved by the gods.Having discovered the secrets by which they pleased the audience, she thought to herself that she was more beautiful and could act better.She went to the manager, and asked to be admitted into the troupe.Thanks to her beauty, and to the lessons she had received from old Moeroe, she was received, and appeared on the stage in the part of Dirce.