Three years later, Constantine, the conquerer of Maxentius, issued an edict which granted toleration to the Christians, and the believers were not henceforth persecuted, except by heretics.
Thais had completed her eleventh year when her friend was tortured to death, and she felt deeply saddened and shocked. Her soul was not sufficiently pure to allow her to understand that the slave Ahmes was blessed both in his life and his death. The idea sprang up in her little mind that no one can be good in this world except at the cost of the most terrible sufferings. And she was afraid to be good, for her delicate flesh could not bear pain.
At an early age, she had given herself to the lads about the port, and she followed the old men who wandered about the quarter in the evening, and with what she received from them she bought cakes and trinkets.
As she did not take home any of the money she gained, her mother continually ill-treated her. To get out of reach of her mother’s arm, she often ran, bare-footed, to the city walls, and hid with the lizards. There she thought with envy of the ladies she had seen pass her, richly dressed, and in a litter surrounded by slaves.
One day, when she had been beaten more brutally than usual, she was crouching down beside the gate, motionless and sulky, when an old woman stopped in front of her, looked at her for some moments in silence, and then cried—
“Oh, the pretty flower! the beautiful child! Happy is the father who begot thee, and the mother who brought thee into the world!”
Thais remained silent, with her eyes fixed on the ground. Her eyelids were red, and it was evident she had been weeping.
“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.”