"My white violet," continued the old woman, "is not your mother happy to
have nourished a little goddess like you, and does not your father, when
he sees you, rejoice from the bottom of his heart?"

To which the child replied, as though talking to herself--

"My father is a wine-skin swollen with wine, and my mother a greedy
horse-leech."

The old woman glanced to right and left, to see if she were observed.
Then, in a fawning voice--

"Sweet flowering hyacinth, beautiful drinker of light, come with me,
and you shall have nothing to do but dance and smile. I will feed you on
honey cakes, and my son--my own son--will love you as his eyes. My son
is handsome and young; he has but little beard on his chin; his skin is
soft, and he is, as they say, a little Acharnian pig."

Thais replied--

"I am quite willing to go with you."

And she rose and followed the old woman out of the city.

The old woman, who was named Moeroe, went from city to city with a
troupe of girls and boys, whom she taught to dance, and then hired out
to rich people to appear at feasts.

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