Chrysis had always remained in ignorance of this incident, the seer having told her mother how dangerous it is to reveal to people the prophecies of which they are the object. She knew nothing of her future. That is why she often thought about it. She remembered her childhood but little, and did not like to speak about it. The only vivid sensation she had retained was the fear and disgust caused her by the anxious surveillance of her mother, who, on the approach of her time for going forth upon the road, shut her up alone in her chamber for interminable hours. She also remembered the round window through which she saw the waters of the lake, the blue-tinted fields, the transparent sky, the blithe air of Galilee. The house was covered with tamarisks and rose-coloured flax. Thorny caper-bushes reared their green heads in wild confusion, over-topping the fine mist of the grasses. The little girls bathed in a limpid brook, where they found red shells under the tufts of flowering laurels; and there were flowers upon the water and flowers over all the mead and great lilies upon the mountains. She was twelve years old when she escaped from home to follow a troop of young horsemen who were on their way to Tyre to sell ivory. She fell in with them before a cistern. They were adorning their long-tailed horses with multi-coloured tufts. She well remembered how she was carried off, pale with joy upon their horses, and how they stopped a second time during the night, a night so clear that the stars were invisible. Neither had she forgotten how they entered Tyre: she in front, seated upon the panniers of a pack-horse, holding on to its mane with her fists, and proudly dangling her naked calves, to show the women of the town that she had pure blood coursing in her well-shaped legs. They left for Egypt that same evening. She followed the ivory-sellers as far as the market of Alexandria. ill-002 _Greek harlots from the isles told her the legend of Iphis._ And it was there, in a little white house with a terrace and tapering columns, that they left her two months afterwards, with her bronze mirror, carpets, new cushions, and a beautiful Hindoo slave who was learned in the dressing of courtesans’ hair. Others came on the evening of their departure, and others on the morrow. As she lived at the extreme east of the town, a quarter disdained by the young Greeks of Brouchion, she was long before she made the acquaintance of aught but travellers and merchants, like her mother. Yet she inspired interminable passions. Caravan-masters were known to sell their merchandise dirt cheap in order to stay with her, and ruin themselves in a few nights. With these men’s fortune she bought jewels, bed-cushions, rare perfumes, flowered robes, and four slaves.