The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-08-16

conversion to Christianity, ne had seen Thais in the theater, and the vision Of her wondrous beauty had haunted him through lasts. prayers and vigils until he left his hermits cell grasped a pill grims staff and sallied forth, wander ing for weeks over the burning sands of the desert, praying hunger, thirst and death, in order to save the sweet soul of Thais.
 He suddenly burst upon her, and in | a fiery flow of words stigmatlzed her | life and the sins of the pagan Worid m general. Thais, surprised ana daunted l by the fanatic eloquence or thls Wlld man of the desert. recalls the days OF her childhood, when she escaped rom the loathsome sailors resort kept by | her sordid parents to listen to the hrst | lessons In Christianity, whispered to her in the darkness of the night by the | ill-used negro slave Ahmes, afterWard known as St Theodore the Nubian She recalled the starlit night when Ahmes carried her concealed beneath ms man. l tle pressed close to his faithful heart, l to the Christian church where she was | hurriedly baptized And Ihals, Who had drunk of every cup of pleasure, un- derstood that at the bottom of each lay the dregs of disappointment satiety and disillusion. She understood that happiness springs from sacr1ilce ana suffering. She understood that every | thing human passes, and that It IS worse to live near what you no longer love than to live near what you have never loevd at all.
 | She was ripe for convulsion; so the new light entered her soul and she adopted the way of the cross. Obedient to the commands of Paphnuce, she united her riches upon the public place, and there made the sacrifice Of all her earthly possessions. Costly carpets and | tapestries, ivory coffers, filed With priceless jewels, stuffs, tunics, statues, worth an empire, were flung in lcono- elastic fury into the sky licking flames. Before the last treasure had climbed into ashes Thais barefooted and roughly clad in the garb of slave, was docilely following Paphnuce beyond the l city. through the desert, toward the convent whose superior was no other than the celebrated Alpine, grandniece I
 Thais was too notorious sinner for her to be admitted at once to the so- ciety of the holy women of the convent In order to make sure that there should be no relenting on her part Paphnuce shut her up in cell, which he sealed with a handful of clay mixed with a hair of his beard Then he returned tc the desert and left her to carry on the
 work of redemption which he had be- gun in such high handed fashion Daily rations of bread and water were sent to her, and Alpine, less austere than Paphnuce, gave her flute, in or.
 der to mitigate the too sudden con
 trast between her old and her new life
 After several months the seal dropped
 from the door, and Alpine, taking this
 to be a direct sign from heaven thai
 the sins of Thais were forgotten ad-
 mitted her to the ordinary routine o1 convent life She died three years
 later a model of contentment an6
 piety. One canot refrain from wonder
 ing what may be the future fate of this
 once imperious Thais, considered bS
 her contemporaries to have been re
 incarnation of Helen of Troy and ThaiS
 of Thebes. If the present rate of sci.
 entific progress continues who knows but what within the next two thousand
 years she may become the center of at
 traction in some future museum in the
 planet Mars. Tout arrive!
 In the meantime Saint Thas is hay
 ing more success than an one or any
 thing in Paris.-Paris letter New Yorl
 Tribune. t,