ll, Paphnutius. How is it you have not
recognised me? I am one of the innumerable incarnations of Thais. You
are a learned monk, and well skilled in the knowledge of things. You
have travelled, and it is by travel a man learns the most. Often a day
passed abroad will show more novelties than ten years passed at home.
You have heard that Thais lived formerly in Argos, under the name of
Helen. She had another existence in Thebes Hecatompyle. And I was Thais
of Thebes. How is it you have not guessed it? I took, when I was alive,
a large share in the sins of this world, and now reduced here to the
condition of a shadow, I am still quite capable of taking your sins
upon me, beloved monk. Whence comes your surprise? It was certain that,
wherever you went, you would find Thais again."

He struck his forehead against the pavement, and uttered a cry of
terror. And every night the player of the theorbo left the wall,
approached him, and spoke in a clear voice mingled with soft breathing.
And as the holy man resisted the temptations she gave him, she said to
him--

"Love me; yield, friend. As long as you resist me I shall torment you.
You do not know what the patience of a dead woman is. I shall wait, if
necessary, till you are dead. Being a sorceress, I shall put into your
lifeless body a spirit who will reanimate it, and who will not refuse me
what I have asked in vain of you. And think, Paphnutius, what a strange
situation when your blessed soul sees, from the height of heaven, its
own body given up to sin. God, who has promised to return you this body
after the day of judgment and the end of time, will Himself be much
puzzled. How can He place in celestial glory a human form inhabited by
a devil, and guarded by a sorceress? You have not thought of that
difficulty. Nor God either, perhaps. Between ourselves, He is not very
knowing. Any ordinary magician can easily deceive Him, and if He had not
His thunder, and the cataracts of heaven, the village urchins would pull
His beard. He has certainly not as much sense as the old serpent, His
adversary. He, indeed, is a wonderful artist. If I am so beautiful, it
is because he adorned me with all my attractions. It was he who taught
me how to braid my hair, and to make for myself rosy fingers with agate
nails. You have misunderstood him. When you came to live in this tomb,
you drove out with your feet the serpents which were here, without
troubling yourself to know whether they were of