her. And yet poor little Zoe, and the
fair-haired Lysippa, and the black-haired daughter of Demetrius, and
even I, poor wretch, should be handsomer, far handsomer than she, if we
could dress ourselves with fine clothes and jewels for which kings would
sell their kingdoms; if we could play Aphrodite as she does, and ride
off in a shell borne aloft on emerald-green glass to look as if it were
floating on the waves; if dolphins set with pearls and turquoises served
us for a footstool, and white ostrich-plumes floated over our heads,
like the silvery clouds that float over Athens in the sky of a fine
spring day. The transparent tissue that she dared not put on would well
become me! If only that were true which Zoe was reading yesterday, that
the souls of men were destined to visit the earth again and again in new
forms! Then perhaps mine might some day come into the world in that of
a king's child. I should not care to be a prince, so much is expected of
him, but a princess indeed! That would be lovely!"

These and such like were Thais' dreams, while Zoe stood outside the tent
of the royal children with her cousin, the chief-attendant of prince
Philopator, carrying on an eager conversation in a low tone. The child's
nurse from time to time dried her eyes and sobbed bitterly as she said:
"My own baby, my other children, my husband and our beautiful house
in Alexandria--I left them all to suckle and rear a prince. I have
sacrificed happiness, freedom, and my nights'-sleep for the sake of the
queen and of this child, and how am I repaid for all this? As if I were
a lowborn wench instead of the daughter and wife of noble men; this
woman, half a child still, scarcely yet nineteen, dismisses me from her
service before you and all her ladies every ten days! And why? Because
the ungoverned blood of her race flows in her son's veins, and because
he does not rush into the arms of a mother who for days does not ask for
him at all, and never troubles herself about him but in some idle moment
when she has gratified every other whim. Princes distribute favor or
disgrace with justice only so long as they are children. The little one
understands very well what I am to him, and sees what Cleopatra is. If I
could find it in my heart to ill-use him in secret, this mother--who is
not fit to be a mother--would soon have her way. Hard as it would be to
me so soon to leave the poor feeble little child, who has grown as
dear to my soul as my own--