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154 herself will not make such a success as she has done."

"Life will be dull when her door is closed." "She was the bright star, the soft moon of the Alexandrian sky."

All the most notorious mendicants of the city — cripples, blind men, and paralytics — had by this time assembled in the place; and crawling through the remnants of the riches, they groaned —

"How shall we live when Thaïs is no longer here to feed us? Every day the fragments from her table fed two hundred poor wretches, and her lovers, when they quitted her, threw us as they passed handfuls of silver pieces."

Some thieves, too, also mingled with the crowd, and created a deafening clamour, and pushed their neighbours, to increase disorder, and take advantage of the tumult to filch some valuable object.

Old Taddeus, who sold Miletan wool and Tarentan linen, and to whom Thaïs owed a large sum of money, alone remained calm and silent in the midst of the uproar. He listened and watched, and gently stroking his goat-beard, seemed thoughtful. At last he approached young Cerons, and pulling him by the sleeve, whispered —

"You are the favoured lover of Thaïs, handsome youth; show yourself, and do not allow this monk to carry her off."