Salammbo

CHAPTER I THE FEAST

It was at Megara, a suburb of Carthage, in the gardens of Hamilcar. The

soldiers whom he had commanded in Sicily were having a great feast to

celebrate the anniversary of the battle of Eryx, and as the master was

away, and they were numerous, they ate and drank with perfect freedom.

The captains, who wore bronze cothurni, had placed themselves in the

central path, beneath a gold-fringed purple awning, which reached from

the wall of the stables to the first terrace of the palace; the common

soldiers were scattered beneath the trees, where numerous flat-roofed

buildings might be seen, wine-presses, cellars, storehouses, bakeries,

and arsenals, with a court for elephants, dens for wild beasts, and a

prison for slaves.

Fig-trees surrounded the kitchens; a wood of sycamores stretched away to

meet masses of verdure, where the pomegranate shone amid the white tufts

of the cotton-plant; vines, grape-laden, grew up into the branches of

the pines; a field of roses bloomed beneath the plane-trees; here and

there lilies rocked upon the turf; the paths were strewn with black sand

mingled with powdered coral, and in the centre the avenue of cypress

formed, as it were, a double colonnade of green obelisks from one

extremity to the other.

Far in the background stood the palace, built of yellow mottled Numidian

marble, broad courses supporting its four terraced stories. With its

large, straight, ebony staircase, bearing the prow of a vanquished

galley at the corners of every step, its red doors quartered with black

crosses, its brass gratings protecting it from scorpions below, and its

trellises of gilded rods closing the apertures above, it seemed to the

soldiers in its haughty opulence as solemn and impenetrable as the face

of Hamilcar.

The Council had appointed his house for the holding of this feast; the

convalescents lying in the temple of Eschmoun had set out at daybreak

and dragged themselves thither on their crutches. Every minute others

were arriving. They poured in ceaselessly by every path like torrents

rushing into a lake; through the trees the slaves of the kitchens might

be seen running scared and half-naked; the gazelles fled bleating on the

lawns; the sun was setting, and the perfume of citron trees rendered the

exhalation from the perspiring crowd heavier still.

Men of all nations were there, Ligurians, Lusitanians, Balearians,

Negroes, and fugitives from Rome. Beside the heavy Dorian dialect were

audible the resonant Celtic syllables rattling like chariots of war,

while Ionian terminations conflicted with consonants of the desert

as harsh as the jackal’s cry. The Greek might be recognised by his

slender figure, the Egyptian by his elevated shoulders, the Cantabrian

by his broad calves. There were Carians proudly nodding their helmet

plumes, Cappadocian archers displaying large flowers painted on their

bodies with the juice of herbs, and a few Lydians in women’s robes,

dining in slippers and earrings. Others were ostentatiously daubed with

vermilion, and resembled coral statues.

They stretched themselves on the cushions, they ate squatting round

large trays, or lying face downwards they drew out the pieces of meat

and sated themselves, leaning on their elbows in the peaceful posture

of lions tearing their prey. The last comers stood leaning against the

trees watching the low tables half hidden beneath the scarlet coverings,

and awaiting their turn.

Hamilcar’s kitchens being insufficient, the Council had sent them

slaves, ware, and beds, and in the middle of the garden, as on a

battle-field when they burn the dead, large bright fires might be seen,

at which oxen were roasting. Anise-sprinkled loaves alternated with

great cheeses heavier than discuses, crateras filled with wine,

and cantharuses filled with water, together with baskets of gold

filigree-work containing flowers. Every eye was dilated with the joy of

being able at last to gorge at pleasure, and songs were beginning here

and there.

First they were served with birds and green sauce in plates of red clay

relieved by drawings in black, then with every kind of shell-fish that

is gathered on the Punic coasts, wheaten porridge, beans and barley, and

snails dressed with cumin on dishes of yellow amber.

Afterwards the tables were covered with meats, antelopes with their

horns, peacocks with their feathers, whole sheep cooked in sweet wine,

haunches of she-camels and buffaloes, hedgehogs with garum, fried

grasshoppers, and preserved dormice. Large pieces of fat floated in the

midst of saffron in bowls of Tamrapanni wood. Everything was running

over with wine, truffles, and asafotida. Pyramids of fruit were

crumbling upon honeycombs, and they had not forgotten a few of those

plump little dogs with pink silky hair and fattened on olive lees,—a

Carthaginian dish held in abhorrence among other nations. Surprise at

the novel fare excited the greed of the stomach. The Gauls with

their long hair drawn up on the crown of the head, snatched at the

water-melons and lemons, and crunched them up with the rind. The

Negroes, who had never seen a lobster, tore their faces with its red

prickles. But the shaven Greeks, whiter than marble, threw the leavings

of their plates behind them, while the herdsmen from Brutium, in their

wolf-skin garments, devoured in silence with their faces in their

portions.

Night fell. The velarium, spread over the cypress avenue, was drawn

back, and torches were brought.

The apes, sacred to the moon, were terrified on the cedar tops by the

wavering lights of the petroleum as it burned in the porphyry vases.

They uttered screams which afforded mirth to the soldiers.

Oblong flames trembled in cuirasses of brass. Every kind of

scintillation flashed from the gem-incrusted dishes. The crateras with

their borders of convex mirrors multiplied and enlarged the images of

things; the soldiers thronged around, looking at their reflections with

amazement, and grimacing to make themselves laugh. They tossed the ivory

stools and golden spatulas to one another across the tables. They gulped

down all the Greek wines in their leathern bottles, the Campanian wine

enclosed in amphoras, the Cantabrian wines brought in casks, with the

wines of the jujube, cinnamomum and lotus. There were pools of these on

the ground that made the foot slip. The smoke of the meats ascended into

the foliage with the vapour of the breath. Simultaneously were heard

the snapping of jaws, the noise of speech, songs, and cups, the crash of

Campanian vases shivering into a thousand pieces, or the limpid sound of

a large silver dish.

In proportion as their intoxication increased they more and more

recalled the injustice of Carthage. The Republic, in fact, exhausted by

the war, had allowed all the returning bands to accumulate in the town.

Gisco, their general, had however been prudent enough to send them back

severally in order to facilitate the liquidation of their pay, and

the Council had believed that they would in the end consent to some

reduction. But at present ill-will was caused by the inability to pay

them. This debt was confused in the minds of the people with the 3200

Euboic talents exacted by Lutatius, and equally with Rome they were

regarded as enemies to Carthage. The Mercenaries understood this, and

their indignation found vent in threats and outbreaks. At last they

demanded permission to assemble to celebrate one of their victories,

and the peace party yielded, at the same time revenging themselves on

Hamilcar who had so strongly upheld the war. It had been terminated

notwithstanding all his efforts, so that, despairing of Carthage, he

had entrusted the government of the Mercenaries to Gisco. To appoint his

palace for their reception was to draw upon him something of the hatred

which was borne to them. Moreover, the expense must be excessive, and he

would incur nearly the whole.

Proud of having brought the Republic to submit, the Mercenaries thought

that they were at last about to return to their homes with the payment

for their blood in the hoods of their cloaks. But as seen through the

mists of intoxication, their fatigues seemed to them prodigious and but

ill-rewarded. They showed one another their wounds, they told of their

combats, their travels and the hunting in their native lands. They

imitated the cries and the leaps of wild beasts. Then came unclean

wagers; they buried their heads in the amphoras and drank on without

interruption, like thirsty dromedaries. A Lusitanian of gigantic stature

ran over the tables, carrying a man in each hand at arm’s length, and

spitting out fire through his nostrils. Some Lacedæmonians, who had not

taken off their cuirasses, were leaping with a heavy step. Some advanced

like women, making obscene gestures; others stripped naked to fight amid

the cups after the fashion of gladiators, and a company of Greeks danced

around a vase whereon nymphs were to be seen, while a Negro tapped with

an ox-bone on a brazen buckler.

Suddenly they heard a plaintive song, a song loud and soft, rising and

falling in the air like the wing-beating of a wounded bird.

It was the voice of the slaves in the ergastulum. Some soldiers rose at

a bound to release them and disappeared.

They returned, driving through the dust amid shouts, twenty men,

distinguished by their greater paleness of face. Small black felt caps

of conical shape covered their shaven heads; they all wore wooden shoes,

and yet made a noise as of old iron like driving chariots.

They reached the avenue of cypress, where they were lost among the crowd

of those questioning them. One of them remained apart, standing. Through

the rents in his tunic his shoulders could be seen striped with long

scars. Drooping his chin, he looked round him with distrust, closing his

eyelids somewhat against the dazzling light of the torches, but when

he saw that none of the armed men were unfriendly to him, a great sigh

escaped from his breast; he stammered, he sneered through the bright

tears that bathed his face. At last he seized a brimming cantharus by

its rings, raised it straight up into the air with his outstretched

arms, from which his chains hung down, and then looking to heaven, and

still holding the cup he said:

“Hail first to thee, Baal-Eschmoun, the deliverer, whom the people of

my country call Æsculapius! and to you, genii of the fountains, light,

and woods! and to you, ye gods hidden beneath the mountains and in the

caverns of the earth! and to you, strong men in shining armour who have

set me free!”

Then he let fall the cup and related his history. He was called

Spendius. The Carthaginians had taken him in the battle of Æginusæ,

and he thanked the Mercenaries once more in Greek, Ligurian and Punic;

he kissed their hands; finally, he congratulated them on the banquet,

while expressing his surprise at not perceiving the cups of the Sacred

Legion. These cups, which bore an emerald vine on each of their

six golden faces, belonged to a corps composed exclusively of young

patricians of the tallest stature. They were a privilege, almost a

sacerdotal distinction, and accordingly nothing among the treasures

of the Republic was more coveted by the Mercenaries. They detested the

Legion on this account, and some of them had been known to risk their

lives for the inconceivable pleasure of drinking out of these cups.

Accordingly they commanded that the cups should be brought. They were

in the keeping of the Syssitia, companies of traders, who had a common

table. The slaves returned. At that hour all the members of the Syssitia

were asleep.

“Let them be awakened!” responded the Mercenaries.

After a second excursion it was explained to them that the cups were

shut up in a temple.

“Let it be opened!” they replied.

And when the slaves confessed with trembling that they were in the

possession of Gisco, the general, they cried out:

“Let him bring them!”

Gisco soon appeared at the far end of the garden with an escort of the

Sacred Legion. His full, black cloak, which was fastened on his head to

a golden mitre starred with precious stones, and which hung all about

him down to his horse’s hoofs, blended in the distance with the colour

of the night. His white beard, the radiancy of his head-dress, and his

triple necklace of broad blue plates beating against his breast, were

alone visible.

When he entered, the soldiers greeted him with loud shouts, all crying:

“The cups! The cups!”

He began by declaring that if reference were had to their courage, they

were worthy of them.

The crowd applauded and howled with joy.

He knew it, he who had commanded them over yonder, and had returned with

the last cohort in the last galley!

“True! True!” said they.

Nevertheless, Gisco continued, the Republic had respected their national

divisions, their customs, and their modes of worship; in Carthage

they were free! As to the cups of the Sacred Legion, they were private

property. Suddenly a Gaul, who was close to Spendius, sprang over the

tables and ran straight up to Gisco, gesticulating and threatening him

with two naked swords.

Without interrupting his speech, the General struck him on the head with

his heavy ivory staff, and the Barbarian fell. The Gauls howled, and

their frenzy, which was spreading to the others, would soon have swept

away the legionaries. Gisco shrugged his shoulders as he saw them

growing pale. He thought that his courage would be useless against these

exasperated brute beasts. It would be better to revenge himself upon

them by some artifice later; accordingly, he signed to his soldiers and

slowly withdrew. Then, turning in the gateway towards the Mercenaries,

he cried to them that they would repent of it.

The feast recommenced. But Gisco might return, and by surrounding the

suburb, which was beside the last ramparts, might crush them against the

walls. Then they felt themselves alone in spite of their crowd, and the

great town sleeping beneath them in the shade suddenly made them afraid,

with its piles of staircases, its lofty black houses, and its vague gods

fiercer even than its people. In the distance a few ships’-lanterns

were gliding across the harbour, and there were lights in the temple of

Khamon. They thought of Hamilcar. Where was he? Why had he forsaken

them when peace was concluded? His differences with the Council were

doubtless but a pretence in order to destroy them. Their unsatisfied

hate recoiled upon him, and they cursed him, exasperating one another

with their own anger. At this juncture they collected together beneath

the plane-trees to see a slave who, with eyeballs fixed, neck contorted,

and lips covered with foam, was rolling on the ground, and beating the

soil with his limbs. Some one cried out that he was poisoned. All then

believed themselves poisoned. They fell upon the slaves, a terrible

clamour was raised, and a vertigo of destruction came like a whirlwind

upon the drunken army. They struck about them at random, they smashed,

they slew; some hurled torches into the foliage; others, leaning over

the lions’ balustrade, massacred the animals with arrows; the most

daring ran to the elephants, desiring to cut down their trunks and eat

ivory.

Some Balearic slingers, however, who had gone round the corner of the

palace, in order to pillage more conveniently, were checked by a lofty

barrier, made of Indian cane. They cut the lock-straps with their

daggers, and then found themselves beneath the front that faced

Carthage, in another garden full of trimmed vegetation. Lines of white

flowers all following one another in regular succession formed long

parabolas like star-rockets on the azure-coloured earth. The gloomy

bushes exhaled warm and honied odours. There were trunks of trees

smeared with cinnabar, which resembled columns covered with blood. In

the centre were twelve pedestals, each supporting a great glass ball,

and these hollow globes were indistinctly filled with reddish lights,

like enormous and still palpitating eyeballs. The soldiers lighted

themselves with torches as they stumbled on the slope of the deeply

laboured soil.

But they perceived a little lake divided into several basins by walls

of blue stones. So limpid was the wave that the flames of the torches

quivered in it at the very bottom, on a bed of white pebbles and golden

dust. It began to bubble, luminous spangles glided past, and great fish

with gems about their mouths, appeared near the surface.

With much laughter the soldiers slipped their fingers into the gills and

brought them to the tables. They were the fish of the Barca family, and

were all descended from those primordial lotes which had hatched the

mystic egg wherein the goddess was concealed. The idea of committing

a sacrilege revived the greediness of the Mercenaries; they speedily

placed fire beneath some brazen vases, and amused themselves by watching

the beautiful fish struggling in the boiling water.

The surge of soldiers pressed on. They were no longer afraid. They

commenced to drink again. Their ragged tunics were wet with the perfumes

that flowed in large drops from their foreheads, and resting both fists

on the tables, which seemed to them to be rocking like ships, they

rolled their great drunken eyes around to devour by sight what they

could not take. Others walked amid the dishes on the purple table

covers, breaking ivory stools, and phials of Tyrian glass to pieces with

their feet. Songs mingled with the death-rattle of the slaves expiring

amid the broken cups. They demanded wine, meat, gold. They cried out for

women. They raved in a hundred languages. Some thought that they were at

the vapour baths on account of the steam which floated around them,

or else, catching sight of the foliage, imagined that they were at

the chase, and rushed upon their companions as upon wild beasts. The

conflagration spread to all the trees, one after another, and the lofty

mosses of verdure, emitting long white spirals, looked like volcanoes

beginning to smoke. The clamour redoubled; the wounded lions roared in

the shade.

In an instant the highest terrace of the palace was illuminated, the

central door opened, and a woman, Hamilcar’s daughter herself, clothed

in black garments, appeared on the threshold. She descended the first

staircase, which ran obliquely along the first story, then the second,

and the third, and stopped on the last terrace at the head of the galley

staircase. Motionless and with head bent, she gazed upon the soldiers.

Behind her, on each side, were two long shadows of pale men, clad in

white, red-fringed robes, which fell straight to their feet. They had no

beard, no hair, no eyebrows. In their hands, which sparkled with rings,

they carried enormous lyres, and with shrill voice they sang a hymn to

the divinity of Carthage. They were the eunuch priests of the temple of

Tanith, who were often summoned by Salammbô to her house.

At last she descended the galley staircase. The priests followed her.

She advanced into the avenue of cypress, and walked slowly through the

tables of the captains, who drew back somewhat as they watched her pass.

Her hair, which was powdered with violet sand, and combined into the

form of a tower, after the fashion of the Chanaanite maidens, added to

her height. Tresses of pearls were fastened to her temples, and fell to

the corners of her mouth, which was as rosy as a half-open pomegranate.

On her breast was a collection of luminous stones, their variegation

imitating the scales of the murena. Her arms were adorned with diamonds,

and issued naked from her sleeveless tunic, which was starred with

red flowers on a perfectly black ground. Between her ankles she wore a

golden chainlet to regulate her steps, and her large dark purple mantle,

cut of an unknown material, trailed behind her, making, as it were, at

each step, a broad wave which followed her.

The priests played nearly stifled chords on their lyres from time to

time, and in the intervals of the music might be heard the tinkling of

the little golden chain, and the regular patter of her papyrus sandals.

No one as yet was acquainted with her. It was only known that she led a

retired life, engaged in pious practices. Some soldiers had seen her in

the night on the summit of her palace kneeling before the stars amid the

eddyings from kindled perfuming-pans. It was the moon that had made her

so pale, and there was something from the gods that enveloped her like a

subtle vapour. Her eyes seemed to gaze far beyond terrestrial space. She

bent her head as she walked, and in her right hand she carried a little

ebony lyre.

They heard her murmur:

“Dead! All dead! No more will you come obedient to my voice as when,

seated on the edge of the lake, I used to throw seeds of the watermelon

into your mouths! The mystery of Tanith ranged in the depths of your

eyes that were more limpid than the globules of rivers.” And she called

them by their names, which were those of the months—“Siv! Sivan!

Tammouz, Eloul, Tischri, Schebar! Ah! have pity on me, goddess!”

The soldiers thronged about her without understanding what she said.

They wondered at her attire, but she turned a long frightened look upon

them all, then sinking her head beneath her shoulders, and waving her

arms, she repeated several times:

“What have you done? what have you done?

“Yet you had bread, and meats and oil, and all the malobathrum of the

granaries for your enjoyment! I had brought oxen from Hecatompylos;

I had sent hunters into the desert!” Her voice swelled; her cheeks

purpled. She added, “Where, pray, are you now? In a conquered town,

or in the palace of a master? And what master? Hamilcar the Suffet, my

father, the servant of the Baals! It was he who withheld from Lutatius

those arms of yours, red now with the blood of his slaves! Know you of

any in your own lands more skilled in the conduct of battles? Look! our

palace steps are encumbered with our victories! Ah! desist not! burn

it! I will carry away with me the genius of my house, my black serpent

slumbering up yonder on lotus leaves! I will whistle and he will follow

me, and if I embark in a galley he will speed in the wake of my ship

over the foam of the waves.”

Her delicate nostrils were quivering. She crushed her nails against the

gems on her bosom. Her eyes drooped, and she resumed:

“Ah! poor Carthage! lamentable city! No longer hast thou for thy

protection the strong men of former days who went beyond the oceans to

build temples on their shores. All the lands laboured about thee, and

the sea-plains, ploughed by thine oars, rocked with thy harvests.”

Then she began to sing the adventures of Melkarth, the god of the

Sidonians, and the father of her family.

She told of the ascent of the mountains of Ersiphonia, the journey to

Tartessus, and the war against Masisabal to avenge the queen of the

serpents:

“He pursued the female monster, whose tail undulated over the dead

leaves like a silver brook, into the forest, and came to a plain where

women with dragon-croups were round a great fire, standing erect on the

points of their tails. The blood-coloured moon was shining within a

pale circle, and their scarlet tongues, cloven like the harpoons of

fishermen, reached curling forth to the very edge of the flame.”

Then Salammbô, without pausing, related how Melkarth, after vanquishing

Masisabal, placed her severed head on the prow of his ship. “At each

throb of the waves it sank beneath the foam, but the sun embalmed it; it

became harder than gold; nevertheless the eyes ceased not to weep, and

the tears fell into the water continually.”

She sang all this in an old Chanaanite idiom, which the Barbarians did

not understand. They asked one another what she could be saying to them

with those frightful gestures which accompanied her speech, and mounted

round about her on the tables, beds, and sycamore boughs, they strove

with open mouths and craned necks to grasp the vague stories hovering

before their imaginations, through the dimness of the theogonies, like

phantoms wrapped in cloud.

Only the beardless priests understood Salammbô; their wrinkled hands,

which hung over the strings of their lyres, quivered, and from time

to time they would draw forth a mournful chord; for, feebler than old

women, they trembled at once with mystic emotion, and with the

fear inspired by men. The Barbarians heeded them not, but listened

continually to the maiden’s song.

None gazed at her like a young Numidian chief, who was placed at the

captains’ tables among soldiers of his own nation. His girdle so

bristled with darts that it formed a swelling in his ample cloak,

which was fastened on his temples with a leather lace. The cloth parted

asunder as it fell upon his shoulders, and enveloped his countenance in

shadow, so that only the fires of his two fixed eyes could be seen. It

was by chance that he was at the feast, his father having domiciled him

with the Barca family, according to the custom by which kings used to

send their children into the households of the great in order to pave

the way for alliances; but Narr’ Havas had lodged there for six months

without having hitherto seen Salammbô, and now, seated on his heels,

with his head brushing the handles of his javelins, he was watching her

with dilated nostrils, like a leopard crouching among the bamboos.

On the other side of the tables was a Libyan of colossal stature, and

with short black curly hair. He had retained only his military jacket,

the brass plates of which were tearing the purple of the couch. A

necklace of silver moons was tangled in his hairy breast. His face was

stained with splashes of blood; he was leaning on his left elbow with a

smile on his large, open mouth.

Salammbô had abandoned the sacred rhythm. With a woman’s subtlety she

was simultaneously employing all the dialects of the Barbarians in order

to appease their anger. To the Greeks she spoke Greek; then she turned

to the Ligurians, the Campanians, the Negroes, and listening to her each

one found again in her voice the sweetness of his native land. She now,

carried away by the memories of Carthage, sang of the ancient battles

against Rome; they applauded. She kindled at the gleaming of the naked

swords, and cried aloud with outstretched arms. Her lyre fell, she was

silent; and, pressing both hands upon her heart, she remained for some

minutes with closed eyelids enjoying the agitation of all these men.

Matho, the Libyan, leaned over towards her. Involuntarily she approached

him, and impelled by grateful pride, poured him a long stream of wine

into a golden cup in order to conciliate the army.

“Drink!” she said.

He took the cup, and was carrying it to his lips when a Gaul, the same

that had been hurt by Gisco, struck him on the shoulder, while in a

jovial manner he gave utterance to pleasantries in his native tongue.

Spendius was not far off, and he volunteered to interpret them.

“Speak!” said Matho.

“The gods protect you; you are going to become rich. When will the

nuptials be?”

“What nuptials?”

“Yours! for with us,” said the Gaul, “when a woman gives drink to

a soldier, it means that she offers him her couch.”

He had not finished when Narr’ Havas, with a bound, drew a javelin

from his girdle, and, leaning his right foot upon the edge of the table,

hurled it against Matho.

The javelin whistled among the cups, and piercing the Lybian’s arm,

pinned it so firmly to the cloth, that the shaft quivered in the air.

Matho quickly plucked it out; but he was weaponless and naked; at last

he lifted the over-laden table with both arms, and flung it against

Narr’ Havas into the very centre of the crowd that rushed between

them. The soldiers and Numidians pressed together so closely that they

were unable to draw their swords. Matho advanced dealing great blows

with his head. When he raised it, Narr’ Havas had disappeared. He

sought for him with his eyes. Salammbô also was gone.

Then directing his looks to the palace he perceived the red door with

the black cross closing far above, and he darted away.

They saw him run between the prows of the galleys, and then reappear

along the three staircases until he reached the red door against which

he dashed his whole body. Panting, he leaned against the wall to keep

himself from falling.

But a man had followed him, and through the darkness, for the lights

of the feast were hidden by the corner of the palace, he recognised

Spendius.

“Begone!” said he.

The slave without replying began to tear his tunic with his teeth;

then kneeling beside Matho he tenderly took his arm, and felt it in the

shadow to discover the wound.

By a ray of the moon which was then gliding between the clouds, Spendius

perceived a gaping wound in the middle of the arm. He rolled the piece

of stuff about it, but the other said irritably, “Leave me! leave

me!”

“Oh no!” replied the slave. “You released me from the ergastulum.

I am yours! you are my master! command me!”

Matho walked round the terrace brushing against the walls. He strained

his ears at every step, glancing down into the silent apartments through

the spaces between the gilded reeds. At last he stopped with a look of

despair.

“Listen!” said the slave to him. “Oh! do not despise me for my

feebleness! I have lived in the palace. I can wind like a viper through

the walls. Come! in the Ancestor’s Chamber there is an ingot of gold

beneath every flagstone; an underground path leads to their tombs.”

“Well! what matters it?” said Matho.

Spendius was silent.

They were on the terrace. A huge mass of shadow stretched before them,

appearing as if it contained vague accumulations, like the gigantic

billows of a black and petrified ocean.

But a luminous bar rose towards the East; far below, on the left, the

canals of Megara were beginning to stripe the verdure of the gardens

with their windings of white. The conical roofs of the heptagonal

temples, the staircases, terraces, and ramparts were being carved by

degrees upon the paleness of the dawn; and a girdle of white foam rocked

around the Carthaginian peninsula, while the emerald sea appeared as if

it were curdled in the freshness of the morning. Then as the rosy sky

grew larger, the lofty houses, bending over the sloping soil, reared

and massed themselves like a herd of black goats coming down from the

mountains. The deserted streets lengthened; the palm-trees that topped

the walls here and there were motionless; the brimming cisterns seemed

like silver bucklers lost in the courts; the beacon on the promontory of

Hermæum was beginning to grow pale. The horses of Eschmoun, on the very

summit of the Acropolis in the cypress wood, feeling that the light was

coming, placed their hoofs on the marble parapet, and neighed towards

the sun.

It appeared, and Spendius raised his arms with a cry.

Everything stirred in a diffusion of red, for the god, as if he were

rending himself, now poured full-rayed upon Carthage the golden rain

of his veins. The beaks of the galleys sparkled, the roof of Khamon

appeared to be all in flames, while far within the temples, whose

doors were opening, glimmerings of light could be seen. Large chariots,

arriving from the country, rolled their wheels over the flagstones

in the streets. Dromedaries, baggage-laden, came down the ramps.

Money-changers raised the pent-houses of their shops at the cross ways,

storks took to flight, white sails fluttered. In the wood of Tanith

might be heard the tabourines of the sacred courtesans, and the furnaces

for baking the clay coffins were beginning to smoke on the Mappalian

point.

Spendius leaned over the terrace; his teeth chattered and he repeated:

“Ah! yes—yes—master! I understand why you scorned the pillage of

the house just now.”

Matho was as if he had just been awaked by the hissing of his voice, and

did not seem to understand. Spendius resumed:

“Ah! what riches! and the men who possess them have not even the steel

to defend them!”

Then, pointing with his right arm outstretched to some of the populace

who were crawling on the sand outside the mole to look for gold dust:

“See!” he said to him, “the Republic is like these wretches:

bending on the brink of the ocean, she buries her greedy arms in every

shore, and the noise of the billows so fills her ear that she cannot

hear behind her the tread of a master’s heel!”

He drew Matho to quite the other end of the terrace, and showed him the

garden, wherein the soldiers’ swords, hanging on the trees, were like

mirrors in the sun.

“But here there are strong men whose hatred is roused! and nothing

binds them to Carthage, neither families, oaths nor gods!”

Matho remained leaning against the wall; Spendius came close, and

continued in a low voice:

“Do you understand me, soldier? We should walk purple-clad like

satraps. We should bathe in perfumes; and I should in turn have slaves!

Are you not weary of sleeping on hard ground, of drinking the vinegar

of the camps, and of continually hearing the trumpet? But you will rest

later, will you not? When they pull off your cuirass to cast your corpse

to the vultures! or perhaps blind, lame, and weak you will go, leaning

on a stick, from door to door to tell of your youth to pickle-sellers

and little children. Remember all the injustice of your chiefs, the

campings in the snow, the marchings in the sun, the tyrannies of

discipline, and the everlasting menace of the cross! And after all this

misery they have given you a necklace of honour, as they hang a girdle

of bells round the breast of an ass to deafen it on its journey, and

prevent it from feeling fatigue. A man like you, braver than Pyrrhus! If

only you had wished it! Ah! how happy will you be in large cool halls,

with the sound of lyres, lying on flowers, with women and buffoons! Do

not tell me that the enterprise is impossible. Have not the Mercenaries

already possessed Rhegium and other fortified places in Italy? Who is to

prevent you? Hamilcar is away; the people execrate the rich; Gisco can

do nothing with the cowards who surround him. Command them! Carthage is

ours; let us fall upon it!”

“No!” said Matho, “the curse of Moloch weighs upon me. I felt it

in her eyes, and just now I saw a black ram retreating in a temple.”

Looking around him he added: “But where is she?”

Then Spendius understood that a great disquiet possessed him, and did

not venture to speak again.

The trees behind them were still smoking; half-burned carcases of apes

dropped from their blackened boughs from time to time into the midst

of the dishes. Drunken soldiers snored open-mouthed by the side of the

corpses, and those who were not asleep lowered their heads dazzled by

the light of day. The trampled soil was hidden beneath splashes of red.

The elephants poised their bleeding trunks between the stakes of their

pens. In the open granaries might be seen sacks of spilled wheat, below

the gate was a thick line of chariots which had been heaped up by the

Barbarians, and the peacocks perched in the cedars were spreading their

tails and beginning to utter their cry.

Matho’s immobility, however, astonished Spendius; he was even paler

than he had recently been, and he was following something on the horizon

with fixed eyeballs, and with both fists resting on the edge of the

terrace. Spendius crouched down, and so at last discovered at what he

was gazing. In the distance a golden speck was turning in the dust on

the road to Utica; it was the nave of a chariot drawn by two mules;

a slave was running at the end of the pole, and holding them by the

bridle. Two women were seated in the chariot. The manes of the animals

were puffed between the ears after the Persian fashion, beneath a

network of blue pearls. Spendius recognised them, and restrained a cry.

A large veil floated behind in the wind.

CHAPTER II AT SICCA

Two days afterwards the Mercenaries left Carthage.

They had each received a piece of gold on the condition that they

should go into camp at Sicca, and they had been told with all sorts of

caresses:

“You are the saviours of Carthage! But you would starve it if you

remained there; it would become insolvent. Withdraw! The Republic will

be grateful to you later for all this condescension. We are going to

levy taxes immediately; your pay shall be in full, and galleys shall be

equipped to take you back to your native lands.”

They did not know how to reply to all this talk. These men, accustomed

as they were to war, were wearied by residence in a town; there was

difficulty in convincing them, and the people mounted the walls to see

them go away.

They defiled through the street of Khamon, and the Cirta gate,

pell-mell, archers with hoplites, captains with soldiers, Lusitanians

with Greeks. They marched with a bold step, rattling their heavy

cothurni on the paving stones. Their armour was dented by the catapult,

and their faces blackened by the sunburn of battles. Hoarse cries issued

from their thick beards, their tattered coats of mail flapped upon the

pommels of their swords, and through the holes in the brass might be

seen their naked limbs, as frightful as engines of war. Sarissæ, axes,

spears, felt caps and bronze helmets, all swung together with a single

motion. They filled the street thickly enough to have made the walls

crack, and the long mass of armed soldiers overflowed between the lofty

bitumen-smeared houses six storys high. Behind their gratings of iron or

reed the women, with veiled heads, silently watched the Barbarians pass.

The terraces, fortifications, and walls were hidden beneath the crowd

of Carthaginians, who were dressed in garments of black. The sailors’

tunics showed like drops of blood among the dark multitude, and nearly

naked children, whose skin shone beneath their copper bracelets,

gesticulated in the foliage of the columns, or amid the branches of

a palm tree. Some of the Ancients were posted on the platform of the

towers, and people did not know why a personage with a long beard stood

thus in a dreamy attitude here and there. He appeared in the distance

against the background of the sky, vague as a phantom and motionless as

stone.

All, however, were oppressed with the same anxiety; it was feared that

the Barbarians, seeing themselves so strong, might take a fancy to stay.

But they were leaving with so much good faith that the Carthaginians

grew bold and mingled with the soldiers. They overwhelmed them with

protestations and embraces. Some with exaggerated politeness and

audacious hypocrisy even sought to induce them not to leave the city.

They threw perfumes, flowers, and pieces of silver to them. They gave

them amulets to avert sickness; but they had spit upon them three times

to attract death, or had enclosed jackal’s hair within them to put

cowardice into their hearts. Aloud, they invoked Melkarth’s favour,

and in a whisper, his curse.

Then came the mob of baggage, beasts of burden, and stragglers. The sick

groaned on the backs of dromedaries, while others limped along leaning

on broken pikes. The drunkards carried leathern bottles, and the greedy

quarters of meat, cakes, fruits, butter wrapped in fig leaves, and snow

in linen bags. Some were to be seen with parasols in their hands, and

parrots on their shoulders. They had mastiffs, gazelles, and panthers

following behind them. Women of Libyan race, mounted on asses, inveighed

against the Negresses who had forsaken the lupanaria of Malqua for the

soldiers; many of them were suckling children suspended on their bosoms

by leathern thongs. The mules were goaded out at the point of the sword,

their backs bending beneath the load of tents, while there were numbers

of serving-men and water-carriers, emaciated, jaundiced with fever,

and filthy with vermin, the scum of the Carthaginian populace, who had

attached themselves to the Barbarians.

When they had passed, the gates were shut behind them, but the people

did not descend from the walls. The army soon spread over the breadth of

the isthmus.

It parted into unequal masses. Then the lances appeared like tall blades

of grass, and finally all was lost in a train of dust; those of the

soldiers who looked back towards Carthage could now only see its long

walls with their vacant battlements cut out against the edge of the sky.

Then the Barbarians heard a great shout. They thought that some from

among them (for they did not know their own number) had remained in the

town, and were amusing themselves by pillaging a temple. They laughed a

great deal at the idea of this, and then continued their journey.

They were rejoiced to find themselves, as in former days, marching all

together in the open country, and some of the Greeks sang the old song

of the Mamertines:

“With my lance and sword I plough and reap; I am master of the house!

The disarmed man falls at my feet and calls me Lord and Great King.”

They shouted, they leaped, the merriest began to tell stories; the

time of their miseries was past. As they arrived at Tunis, some of

them remarked that a troop of Balearic slingers was missing. They were

doubtless not far off; and no further heed was paid to them.

Some went to lodge in the houses, others camped at the foot of the

walls, and the townspeople came out to chat with the soldiers.

During the whole night fires were seen burning on the horizon in the

direction of Carthage; the light stretched like giant torches across the

motionless lake. No one in the army could tell what festival was being

celebrated.

On the following day the Barbarians passed through a region that was

covered with cultivation. The domains of the patricians succeeded one

another along the border of the route; channels of water flowed

through woods of palm; there were long, green lines of olive-trees;

rose-coloured vapours floated in the gorges of the hills, while blue

mountains reared themselves behind. A warm wind was blowing. Chameleons

were crawling on the broad leaves of the cactus.

The Barbarians slackened their speed.

They marched on in isolated detachments, or lagged behind one another at

long intervals. They ate grapes along the margin of the vines. They lay

on the grass and gazed with stupefaction upon the large, artificially

twisted horns of the oxen, the sheep clothed with skins to protect their

wool, the furrows crossing one another so as to form lozenges, and the

ploughshares like ships’ anchors, with the pomegranate trees that were

watered with silphium. Such wealth of the soil and such inventions of

wisdom dazzled them.

In the evening they stretched themselves on the tents without unfolding

them; and thought with regret of Hamilcar’s feast, as they fell asleep

with their faces towards the stars.

In the middle of the following day they halted on the bank of a river,

amid clumps of rose-bays. Then they quickly threw aside lances, bucklers

and belts. They bathed with shouts, and drew water in their helmets,

while others drank lying flat on their stomachs, and all in the midst of

the beasts of burden whose baggage was slipping from them.

Spendius, who was seated on a dromedary stolen in Hamilcar’s parks,

perceived Matho at a distance, with his arm hanging against his breast,

his head bare, and his face bent down, giving his mule drink, and

watching the water flow. Spendius immediately ran through the crowd

calling him, “Master! master!”

Matho gave him but scant thanks for his blessings, but Spendius paid no

heed to this, and began to march behind him, from time to time turning

restless glances in the direction of Carthage.

He was the son of a Greek rhetor and a Campanian prostitute. He had at

first grown rich by dealing in women; then, ruined by a shipwreck, he

had made war against the Romans with the herdsmen of Samnium. He had

been taken and had escaped; he had been retaken, and had worked in the

quarries, panted in the vapour-baths, shrieked under torture, passed

through the hands of many masters, and experienced every frenzy. At

last, one day, in despair, he had flung himself into the sea from the

top of a trireme where he was working at the oar. Some of Hamilcar’s

sailors had picked him up when at the point of death, and had brought

him to the ergastulum of Megara, at Carthage. But, as fugitives were to

be given back to the Romans, he had taken advantage of the confusion to

fly with the soldiers.

During the whole of the march he remained near Matho; he brought him

food, assisted him to dismount, and spread a carpet in the evening

beneath his head. Matho at last was touched by these attentions, and by

degrees unlocked his lips.

He had been born in the gulf of Syrtis. His father had taken him on a

pilgrimage to the temple of Ammon. Then he had hunted elephants in the

forests of the Garamantes. Afterwards he had entered the service of

Carthage. He had been appointed tetrarch at the capture of Drepanum.

The Republic owed him four horses, twenty-three medimni of wheat, and

a winter’s pay. He feared the gods, and wished to die in his native

land.

Spendius spoke to him of his travels, and of the peoples and temples

that he had visited. He knew many things: he could make sandals,

boar-spears and nets; he could tame wild beasts and could cook fish.

Sometimes he would interrupt himself, and utter a hoarse cry from the

depths of his throat; Matho’s mule would quicken his pace, and others

would hasten after them, and then Spendius would begin again though

still torn with agony. This subsided at last on the evening of the

fourth day.

They were marching side by side to the right of the army on the side of

a hill; below them stretched the plain lost in the vapours of the night.

The lines of soldiers also were defiling below, making undulations in

the shade. From time to time these passed over eminences lit up by the

moon; then stars would tremble on the points of the pikes, the helmets

would glimmer for an instant, all would disappear, and others would come

on continually. Startled flocks bleated in the distance, and a something

of infinite sweetness seemed to sink upon the earth.

Spendius, with his head thrown back and his eyes half-closed, inhaled

the freshness of the wind with great sighs; he spread out his arms,

moving his fingers that he might the better feel the cares that streamed

over his body. Hopes of vengeance came back to him and transported him.

He pressed his hand upon his mouth to check his sobs, and half-swooning

with intoxication, let go the halter of his dromedary, which was

proceeding with long, regular steps. Matho had relapsed into his former

melancholy; his legs hung down to the ground, and the grass made a

continuous rustling as it beat against his cothurni.

The journey, however, spread itself out without ever coming to an end.

At the extremity of a plain they would always reach a round-shaped

plateau; then they would descend again into a valley, and the mountains

which seemed to block up the horizon would, in proportion as they were

approached, glide as it were from their positions. From time to time a

river would appear amid the verdure of tamarisks to lose itself at the

turning of the hills. Sometimes a huge rock would tower aloft like the

prow of a vessel or the pedestal of some vanished colossus.

At regular intervals they met with little quadrangular temples, which

served as stations for the pilgrims who repaired to Sicca. They were

closed like tombs. The Libyans struck great blows upon the doors to have

them opened. But no one inside responded.

Then the cultivation became more rare. They suddenly entered upon belts

of sand bristling with thorny thickets. Flocks of sheep were browsing

among the stones; a woman with a blue fleece about her waist was

watching them. She fled screaming when she saw the soldiers’ pikes

among the rocks.

They were marching through a kind of large passage bordered by two

chains of reddish coloured hillocks, when their nostrils were greeted

with a nauseous odour, and they thought that they could see something

extraordinary on the top of a carob tree: a lion’s head reared itself

above the leaves.

They ran thither. It was a lion with his four limbs fastened to a cross

like a criminal. His huge muzzle fell upon his breast, and his two

fore-paws, half-hidden beneath the abundance of his mane, were spread

out wide like the wings of a bird. His ribs stood severally out beneath

his distended skin; his hind legs, which were nailed against each other,

were raised somewhat, and the black blood, flowing through his hair,

had collected in stalactites at the end of his tail, which hung down

perfectly straight along the cross. The soldiers made merry around; they

called him consul, and Roman citizen, and threw pebbles into his eyes to

drive away the gnats.

But a hundred paces further on they saw two more, and then there

suddenly appeared a long file of crosses bearing lions. Some had been

so long dead that nothing was left against the wood but the remains

of their skeletons; others which were half eaten away had their jaws

twisted into horrible grimaces; there were some enormous ones; the

shafts of the crosses bent beneath them, and they swayed in the wind,

while bands of crows wheeled ceaselessly in the air above their heads.

It was thus that the Carthaginian peasants avenged themselves when

they captured a wild beast; they hoped to terrify the others by such

an example. The Barbarians ceased their laughter, and were long lost

in amazement. “What people is this,” they thought, “that amuses

itself by crucifying lions!”

They were, besides, especially the men of the North, vaguely uneasy,

troubled, and already sick. They tore their hands with the darts of the

aloes; great mosquitoes buzzed in their ears, and dysentry was breaking

out in the army. They were weary at not yet seeing Sicca. They were

afraid of losing themselves and of reaching the desert, the country of

sands and terrors. Many even were unwilling to advance further. Others

started back to Carthage.

At last on the seventh day, after following the base of a mountain for a

long time, they turned abruptly to the right, and there then appeared

a line of walls resting on white rocks and blending with them. Suddenly

the entire city rose; blue, yellow, and white veils moved on the walls

in the redness of the evening. These were the priestesses of Tanith,

who had hastened hither to receive the men. They stood ranged along the

rampart, striking tabourines, playing lyres, and shaking crotala, while

the rays of the sun, setting behind them in the mountains of Numidia,

shot between the strings of their lyres over which their naked arms were

stretched. At intervals their instruments would become suddenly still,

and a cry would break forth strident, precipitate, frenzied, continuous,

a sort of barking which they made by striking both corners of the mouth

with the tongue. Others, more motionless than the Sphynx, rested on

their elbows with their chins on their hands, and darted their great

black eyes upon the army as it ascended.

Although Sicca was a sacred town it could not hold such a multitude; the

temple alone, with its appurtenances, occupied half of it. Accordingly

the Barbarians established themselves at their ease on the plain;

those who were disciplined in regular troops, and the rest according to

nationality or their own fancy.

The Greeks ranged their tents of skin in parallel lines; the Iberians

placed their canvas pavilions in a circle; the Gauls made themselves

huts of planks; the Libyans cabins of dry stones, while the Negroes with

their nails hollowed out trenches in the sand to sleep in. Many, not

knowing where to go, wandered about among the baggage, and at nightfall

lay down in their ragged mantles on the ground.

The plain, which was wholly bounded by mountains, expanded around them.

Here and there a palm tree leaned over a sand hill, and pines and oaks

flecked the sides of the precipices: sometimes the rain of a storm would

hang from the sky like a long scarf, while the country everywhere was

still covered with azure and serenity; then a warm wind would drive

before it tornadoes of dust, and a stream would descend in cascades from

the heights of Sicca, where, with its roofing of gold on its columns of

brass, rose the temple of the Carthaginian Venus, the mistress of the

land. She seemed to fill it with her soul. In such convulsions of the

soil, such alternations of temperature, and such plays of light would

she manifest the extravagance of her might with the beauty of her

eternal smile. The mountains at their summits were crescent-shaped;

others were like women’s bosoms presenting their swelling breasts, and

the Barbarians felt a heaviness that was full of delight weighing down

their fatigues.

Spendius had bought a slave with the money brought him by his dromedary.

The whole day long he lay asleep stretched before Matho’s tent. Often

he would awake, thinking in his dreams that he heard the whistling of

the thongs; with a smile he would pass his hands over the scars on his

legs at the place where the fetters had long been worn, and then he

would fall asleep again.

Matho accepted his companionship, and when he went out Spendius would

escort him like a lictor with a long sword on his thigh; or perhaps

Matho would rest his arm carelessly on the other’s shoulder, for

Spendius was small.

One evening when they were passing together through the streets in the

camp they perceived some men covered with white cloaks; among them was

Narr’ Havas, the prince of the Numidians. Matho started.

“Your sword!” he cried; “I will kill him!”

“Not yet!” said Spendius, restraining him. Narr’ Havas was already

advancing towards him.

He kissed both thumbs in token of alliance, showing nothing of the anger

which he had experienced at the drunkenness of the feast; then he spoke

at length against Carthage, but did not say what brought him among the

Barbarians.

“Was it to betray them, or else the Republic?” Spendius asked

himself; and as he expected to profit by every disorder, he felt

grateful to Narr’ Havas for the future perfidies of which he suspected

him.

The chief of the Numidians remained amongst the Mercenaries. He appeared

desirous of attaching Matho to himself. He sent him fat goats, gold

dust, and ostrich feathers. The Libyan, who was amazed at such caresses,

was in doubt whether to respond to them or to become exasperated at

them. But Spendius pacified him, and Matho allowed himself to be ruled

by the slave, remaining ever irresolute and in an unconquerable torpor,

like those who have once taken a draught of which they are to die.

One morning when all three went out lion-hunting, Narr’ Havas

concealed a dagger in his cloak. Spendius kept continually behind him,

and when they returned the dagger had not been drawn.

Another time Narr’ Havas took them a long way off, as far as the

boundaries of his kingdom. They came to a narrow gorge, and Narr’

Havas smiled as he declared that he had forgotten the way. Spendius

found it again.

But most frequently Matho would go off at sunrise, as melancholy as

an augur, to wander about the country. He would stretch himself on the

sand, and remain there motionless until the evening.

He consulted all the soothsayers in the army one after the

other,—those who watch the trail of serpents, those who read the

stars, and those who breathe upon the ashes of the dead. He swallowed

galbanum, seseli, and viper’s venom which freezes the heart; Negro

women, singing barbarous words in the moonlight, pricked the skin of

his forehead with golden stylets; he loaded himself with necklaces

and charms; he invoked in turn Baal-Khamon, Moloch, the seven Kabiri,

Tanith, and the Venus of the Greeks. He engraved a name upon a copper

plate, and buried it in the sand at the threshold of his tent. Spendius

used to hear him groaning and talking to himself.

One night he went in.

Matho, as naked as a corpse, was lying on a lion’s skin flat on his

stomach, with his face in both his hands; a hanging lamp lit up his

armour, which was hooked on to the tent-pole above his head.

“You are suffering?” said the slave to him. “What is the matter

with you? Answer me?” And he shook him by the shoulder calling him

several times, “Master! master!”

At last Matho lifted large troubled eyes towards him.

“Listen!” he said in a low voice, and with a finger on his lips.

“It is the wrath of the Gods! Hamilcar’s daughter pursues me! I am

afraid of her, Spendius!” He pressed himself close against his breast

like a child terrified by a phantom. “Speak to me! I am sick! I want

to get well! I have tried everything! But you, you perhaps know some

stronger gods, or some resistless invocation?”

“For what purpose?” asked Spendius.

Striking his head with both his fists, he replied:

“To rid me of her!”

Then speaking to himself with long pauses he said:

“I am no doubt the victim of some holocaust which she has promised to

the gods?—She holds me fast by a chain which people cannot see. If I

walk, it is she that is advancing; when I stop, she is resting! Her eyes

burn me, I hear her voice. She encompasses me, she penetrates me. It

seems to me that she has become my soul!

“And yet between us there are, as it were, the invisible billows of a

boundless ocean! She is far away and quite inaccessible! The splendour

of her beauty forms a cloud of light around her, and at times I think

that I have never seen her—that she does not exist—and that it is

all a dream!”

Matho wept thus in the darkness; the Barbarians were sleeping. Spendius,

as he looked at him, recalled the young men who once used to entreat

him with golden cases in their hands, when he led his herd of courtesans

through the towns; a feeling of pity moved him, and he said—

“Be strong, my master! Summon your will, and beseech the gods no more,

for they turn not aside at the cries of men! Weeping like a coward! And

you are not humiliated that a woman can cause you so much suffering?”

“Am I a child?” said Matho. “Do you think that I am moved by their

faces and songs? We kept them at Drepanum to sweep out our stables. I

have embraced them amid assaults, beneath falling ceilings, and while

the catapult was still vibrating!—But she, Spendius, she!—”

The slave interrupted him:

“If she were not Hanno’s daughter—”

“No!” cried Matho. “She has nothing in common with the daughters

of other men! Have you seen her great eyes beneath her great eyebrows,

like suns beneath triumphal arches? Think: when she appeared all the

torches grew pale. Her naked breast shone here and there through the

diamonds of her necklace; behind her you perceived as it were the odour

of a temple, and her whole being emitted something that was sweeter than

wine and more terrible than death. She walked, however, and then she

stopped.”

He remained gaping with his head cast down and his eyeballs fixed.

“But I want her! I need her! I am dying for her! I am transported with

frenzied joy at the thought of clasping her in my arms, and yet I hate

her, Spendius! I should like to beat her! What is to be done? I have a

mind to sell myself and become her slave! You have been that! You were

able to get sight of her; speak to me of her! Every night she ascends

to the terrace of her palace, does she not? Ah! the stones must quiver

beneath her sandals, and the stars bend down to see her!”

He fell back in a perfect frenzy, with a rattling in his throat like a

wounded bull.

Then Matho sang: “He pursued into the forest the female monster, whose

tail undulated over the dead leaves like a silver brook.” And with

lingering tones he imitated Salammbô’s voice, while his outspread

hands were held like two light hands on the strings of a lyre.

To all the consolations offered by Spendius, he repeated the same words;

their nights were spent in these wailings and exhortations.

Matho sought to drown his thoughts in wine. After his fits of

drunkenness he was more melancholy still. He tried to divert himself at

huckle-bones, and lost the gold plates of his necklace one by one. He

had himself taken to the servants of the Goddess; but he came down the

hill sobbing, like one returning from a funeral.

Spendius, on the contrary, became more bold and gay. He was to be seen

in the leafy taverns discoursing in the midst of the soldiers. He mended

old cuirasses. He juggled with daggers. He went and gathered herbs in

the fields for the sick. He was facetious, dexterous, full of invention

and talk; the Barbarians grew accustomed to his services, and he came to

be loved by them.

However, they were awaiting an ambassador from Carthage to bring

them mules laden with baskets of gold; and ever beginning the same

calculation over again, they would trace figures with their fingers in

the sand. Every one was arranging his life beforehand; they would have

concubines, slaves, lands; others intended to bury their treasure,

or risk it on a vessel. But their tempers were provoked by want of

employment; there were constant disputes between horse-soldiers and

foot-soldiers, Barbarians and Greeks, while there was a never-ending din

of shrill female voices.

Every day men came flocking in nearly naked, and with grass on their

heads to protect them from the sun; they were the debtors of the rich

Carthaginians and had been forced to till the lands of the latter, but

had escaped. Libyans came pouring in with peasants ruined by the taxes,

outlaws, and malefactors. Then the horde of traders, all the dealers in

wine and oil, who were furious at not being paid, laid the blame upon

the Republic. Spendius declaimed against it. Soon the provisions ran

low; and there was talk of advancing in a body upon Carthage, and

calling in the Romans.

One evening, at supper-time, dull cracked sounds were heard approaching,

and something red appeared in the distance among the undulations of the

soil.

It was a large purple litter, adorned with ostrich feathers at the

corners. Chains of crystal and garlands of pearls beat against the

closed hangings. It was followed by camels sounding the great bells

that hung at their breasts, and having around them horsemen clad from

shoulder to heel in armour of golden scales.

They halted three hundred paces from the camp to take their round

bucklers, broad swords, and Boeotian helmets out of the cases which they

carried behind their saddles. Some remained with the camels, while

the others resumed their march. At last the ensigns of the Republic

appeared, that is to say, staves of blue wood terminated in horses’

heads or fir cones. The Barbarians all rose with applause; the women

rushed towards the guards of the Legion and kissed their feet.

The litter advanced on the shoulders of twelve Negroes who walked in

step with short, rapid strides; they went at random to right or left,

being embarrassed by the tent-ropes, the animals that were straying

about, or the tripods where food was being cooked. Sometimes a fat hand,

laden with rings, would partially open the litter, and a hoarse voice

would utter loud reproaches; then the bearers would stop and take a

different direction through the camp.

But the purple curtains were raised, and a human head, impassible and

bloated, was seen resting on a large pillow; the eyebrows, which were

like arches of ebony, met each other at the points; golden dust sparkled

in the frizzled hair, and the face was so wan that it looked as if

it had been powdered with marble raspings. The rest of the body was

concealed beneath the fleeces which filled the litter.

In the man so reclining the soldiers recognised the Suffet Hanno, he

whose slackness had assisted to lose the battle of the Ægatian islands;

and as to his victory at Hecatompylos over the Libyans, even if he did

behave with clemency, thought the Barbarians, it was owing to cupidity,

for he had sold all the captives on his own account, although he had

reported their deaths to the Republic.

After seeking for some time a convenient place from which to harangue

the soldiers, he made a sign; the litter stopped, and Hanno, supported

by two slaves, put his tottering feet to the ground.

He wore boots of black felt strewn with silver moons. His legs were

swathed in bands like those wrapped about a mummy, and the flesh crept

through the crossings of the linen; his stomach came out beyond the

scarlet jacket which covered his thighs; the folds of his neck fell down

to his breast like the dewlaps of an ox; his tunic, which was painted

with flowers, was bursting at the arm-pits; he wore a scarf, a girdle,

and an ample black cloak with laced double-sleeves. But the abundance of

his garments, his great necklace of blue stones, his golden clasps, and

heavy earrings only rendered his deformity still more hideous. He might

have been taken for some big idol rough-hewn in a block of stone; for

a pale leprosy, which was spread over his whole body, gave him the

appearance of an inert thing. His nose, however, which was hooked like

a vulture’s beak, was violently dilated to breathe in the air, and his

little eyes, with their gummed lashes, shone with a hard and metallic

lustre. He held a spatula of aloe-wood in his hand wherewith to scratch

his skin.

At last two heralds sounded their silver horns; the tumult subsided, and

Hanno commenced to speak.

He began with an eulogy of the gods and the Republic; the Barbarians

ought to congratulate themselves on having served it. But they must show

themselves more reasonable; times were hard, “and if a master has only

three olives, is it not right that he should keep two for himself?”

The old Suffet mingled his speech in this way with proverbs and

apologues, nodding his head the while to solicit some approval.

He spoke in Punic, and those surrounding him (the most alert, who

had hastened thither without their arms), were Campanians, Gauls, and

Greeks, so that no one in the crowd understood him. Hanno, perceiving

this, stopped and reflected, swaying himself heavily from one leg to the

other.

It occurred to him to call the captains together; then his heralds

shouted the order in Greek, the language which, from the time of

Xanthippus, had been used for commands in the Carthaginian armies.

The guards dispersed the mob of soldiers with strokes of the whip; and

the captains of the Spartan phalanxes and the chiefs of the Barbarian

cohorts soon arrived with the insignia of their rank, and in the

armour of their nation. Night had fallen, a great tumult was spreading

throughout the plain; fires were burning here and there; and the

soldiers kept going from one to another asking what the matter was, and

why the Suffet did not distribute the money?

He was setting the infinite burdens of the Republic before the captains.

Her treasury was empty. The tribute to Rome was crushing her. “We are

quite at a loss what to do! She is much to be pitied!”

From time to time he would rub his limbs with his aloe-wood spatula,

or perhaps he would break off to drink a ptisan made of the ashes of a

weasel and asparagus boiled in vinegar from a silver cup handed to

him by a slave; then he would wipe his lips with a scarlet napkin and

resume:

“What used to be worth a shekel of silver is now worth three shekels

of gold, while the cultivated lands which were abandoned during the war

bring in nothing! Our purpura fisheries are nearly gone, and even pearls

are becoming exhorbitant; we have scarcely unguents enough for the

service of the gods! As for the things of the table, I shall say nothing

about them; it is a calamity! For want of galleys we are without spices,

and it is a matter of great difficulty to procure silphium on account

of the rebellions on the Cyrenian frontier. Sicily, where so many slaves

used to be had, is now closed to us! Only yesterday I gave more money

for a bather and four scullions than I used at one time to give for a

pair of elephants!”

He unrolled a long piece of papyrus; and, without omitting a single

figure, read all the expenses that the government had incurred; so much

for repairing the temples, for paving the streets, for the construction

of vessels, for the coral-fisheries, for the enlargement of the

Syssitia, and for engines in the mines in the country of the

Cantabrians.

But the captains understood Punic as little as the soldiers, although

the Mercenaries saluted one another in that language. It was usual to

place a few Carthaginian officers in the Barbarian armies to act as

interpreters; after the war they had concealed themselves through fear

of vengeance, and Hanno had not thought of taking them with him; his

hollow voice, too, was lost in the wind.

The Greeks, girthed in their iron waist-belts, strained their ears as

they strove to guess at his words, while the mountaineers, covered with

furs like bears, looked at him with distrust, or yawned as they leaned

on their brass-nailed clubs. The heedless Gauls sneered as they

shook their lofty heads of hair, and the men of the desert listened

motionless, cowled in their garments of grey wool; others kept coming up

behind; the guards, crushed by the mob, staggered on their horses; the

Negroes held out burning fir branches at arm’s length; and the big

Carthaginian, mounted on a grassy hillock, continued his harangue.

The Barbarians, however, were growing impatient; murmuring arose, and

every one apostrophized him. Hanno gesticulated with his spatula; and

those who wished the others to be quiet shouted still more loudly,

thereby adding to the din.

Suddenly a man of mean appearance bounded to Hanno’s feet, snatched

up a herald’s trumpet, blew it, and Spendius (for it was he) announced

that he was going to say something of importance. At this declaration,

which was rapidly uttered in five different languages, Greek, Latin,

Gallic, Libyan and Balearic, the captains, half laughing and half

surprised, replied: “Speak! Speak!”

Spendius hesitated; he trembled; at last, addressing the Libyans who

were the most numerous, he said to them:

“You have all heard this man’s horrible threats!”

Hanno made no exclamation, therefore he did not understand Libyan; and,

to carry on the experiment, Spendius repeated the same phrase in the

other Barbarian dialects.

They looked at one another in astonishment; then, as by a tacit

agreement, and believing perhaps that they had understood, they bent

their heads in token of assent.

Then Spendius began in vehement tones:

“He said first that all the Gods of the other nations were but dreams

besides the Gods of Carthage! He called you cowards, thieves, liars,

dogs, and the sons of dogs! But for you (he said that!) the Republic

would not be forced to pay excessive tribute to the Romans; and through

your excesses you have drained it of perfumes, aromatics, slaves,

and silphium, for you are in league with the nomads on the Cyrenian

frontier! But the guilty shall be punished! He read the enumeration of

their torments; they shall be made to work at the paving of the streets,

at the equipment of the vessels, at the adornment of the Syssitia, while

the rest shall be sent to scrape the earth in the mines in the country

of the Cantabrians.”

Spendius repeated the same statements to the Gauls, Greeks, Campanians

and Balearians. The Mercenaries, recognising several of the proper

names which had met their ears, were convinced that he was accurately

reporting the Suffet’s speech. A few cried out to him, “You lie!”

but their voices were drowned in the tumult of the rest; Spendius added:

“Have you not seen that he has left a reserve of his horse-soldiers

outside the camp? At a given signal they will hasten hither to slay you

all.”

The Barbarians turned in that direction, and as the crowd was then

scattering, there appeared in the midst of them, and advancing with the

slowness of a phantom, a human being, bent, lean, entirely naked, and

covered down to his flanks with long hair bristling with dried leaves,

dust and thorns. About his loins and his knees he had wisps of straw and

linen rags; his soft and earthy skin hung on his emaciated limbs like

tatters on dried boughs; his hands trembled with a continuous quivering,

and as he walked he leaned on a staff of olive-wood.

He reached the Negroes who were bearing the torches. His pale gums were

displayed in a sort of idiotic titter; his large, scared eyes gazed upon

the crowd of Barbarians around him.

But uttering a cry of terror he threw himself behind them, shielding

himself with their bodies. “There they are! There they are!” he

stammered out, pointing to the Suffet’s guards, who were motionless

in their glittering armour. Their horses, dazzled by the light of the

torches which crackled in the darkness, were pawing the ground; the

human spectre struggled and howled:

“They have killed them!”

At these words, which were screamed in Balearic, some Balearians came up

and recognised him; without answering them he repeated:

“Yes, all killed, all! crushed like grapes! The fine young men! the

slingers! my companions and yours!”

They gave him wine to drink, and he wept; then he launched forth into

speech.

Spendius could scarcely repress his joy, as he explained the horrors

related by Zarxas to the Greeks and Libyans; he could not believe them,

so appropriately did they come in. The Balearians grew pale as they

learned how their companions had perished.

It was a troop of three hundred slingers who had disembarked the evening

before, and had on that day slept too late. When they reached the

square of Khamon the Barbarians were gone, and they found themselves

defenceless, their clay bullets having been put on the camels with the

rest of the baggage. They were allowed to advance into the street of

Satheb as far as the brass sheathed oaken gate; then the people with a

single impulse had sprung upon them.

Indeed, the soldiers remembered a great shout; Spendius, who was flying

at the head of the columns, had not heard it.

Then the corpses were placed in the arms of the Patæc gods that fringed

the temple of Khamon. They were upbraided with all the crimes of the

Mercenaries; their gluttony, their thefts, their impiety, their disdain,

and the murder of the fishes in Salammbô’s garden. Their bodies were

subjected to infamous mutilations; the priests burned their hair

in order to torture their souls; they were hung up in pieces in the

meat-shops; some even buried their teeth in them, and in the evening

funeral-piles were kindled at the cross-ways to finish them.

These were the flames that had gleamed from a distance across the lake.

But some houses having taken fire, any dead or dying that remained were

speedily thrown over the walls; Zarxas had remained among the reeds on

the edge of the lake until the following day; then he had wandered about

through the country, seeking for the army by the footprints in the dust.

In the morning he hid himself in caves; in the evening he resumed his

march with his bleeding wounds, famished, sick, living on roots and

carrion; at last one day he perceived lances on the horizon, and he

had followed them, for his reason was disturbed through his terrors and

miseries.

The indignation of the soldiers, restrained so long as he was speaking,

broke forth like a tempest; they were going to massacre the guards

together with the Suffet. A few interposed, saying that they ought to

hear him and know at least whether they should be paid. Then they all

cried: “Our money!” Hanno replied that he had brought it.

They ran to the outposts, and the Suffet’s baggage arrived in the

midst of the tents, pressed forward by the Barbarians. Without waiting

for the slaves, they very quickly unfastened the baskets; in them they

found hyacinth robes, sponges, scrapers, brushes, perfumes, and antimony

pencils for painting the eyes—all belonging to the guards, who were

rich men and accustomed to such refinements. Next they uncovered a large

bronze tub on a camel: it belonged to the Suffet who had it for bathing

in during his journey; for he had taken all manner of precautions, even

going so far as to bring caged weasels from Hecatompylos, which were

burnt alive to make his ptisan. But, as his malady gave him a great

appetite, there were also many comestibles and many wines, pickle, meats

and fishes preserved in honey, with little pots of Commagene, or melted

goose-fat covered with snow and chopped straw. There was a considerable

supply of it; the more they opened the baskets the more they found, and

laughter arose like conflicting waves.

As to the pay of the Mercenaries it nearly filled two esparto-grass

baskets; there were even visible in one of them some of the leathern

discs which the Republic used to economise its specie; and as the

Barbarians appeared greatly surprised, Hanno told them that, their

accounts being very difficult, the Ancients had not had leisure to

examine them. Meanwhile they had sent them this.

Then everything was in disorder and confusion: mules, serving men,

litter, provisions, and baggage. The soldiers took the coin in the bags

to stone Hanno. With great difficulty he was able to mount an ass; and

he fled, clinging to its hair, howling, weeping, shaken, bruised, and

calling down the curse of all the gods upon the army. His broad necklace

of precious stones rebounded up to his ears. His cloak which was too

long, and which trailed behind him, he kept on with his teeth, and

from afar the Barbarians shouted at him, “Begone coward! pig! sink of

Moloch! sweat your gold and your plague! quicker! quicker!” The routed

escort galloped beside him.

But the fury of the Barbarians did not abate. They remembered that

several of them who had set out for Carthage had not returned; no doubt

they had been killed. So much injustice exasperated them, and they began

to pull up the stakes of their tents, to roll up their cloaks, and to

bridle their horses; every one took his helmet and sword, and instantly

all was ready. Those who had no arms rushed into the woods to cut

staves.

Day dawned; the people of Sicca were roused, and stirring in the

streets. “They are going to Carthage,” said they, and the rumour of

this soon spread through the country.

From every path and every ravine men arose. Shepherds were seen running

down from the mountains.

Then, when the Barbarians had set out, Spendius circled the plain,

riding on a Punic stallion, and attended by his slave, who led a third

horse.

A single tent remained. Spendius entered it.

“Up, master! rise! we are departing!”

“And where are you going?” asked Matho.

“To Carthage!” cried Spendius.

Matho bounded upon the horse which the slave held at the door.

CHAPTER III SALAMMBÔ

The moon was rising just above the waves, and on the town which

was still wrapped in darkness there glittered white and luminous

specks:—the pole of a chariot, a dangling rag of linen, the corner of

a wall, or a golden necklace on the bosom of a god. The glass balls on

the roofs of the temples beamed like great diamonds here and there.

But ill-defined ruins, piles of black earth, and gardens formed deeper

masses in the gloom, and below Malqua fishermen’s nets stretched

from one house to another like gigantic bats spreading their wings. The

grinding of the hydraulic wheels which conveyed water to the highest

storys of the palaces, was no longer heard; and the camels, lying

ostrich fashion on their stomachs, rested peacefully in the middle of

the terraces. The porters were asleep in the streets on the thresholds

of the houses; the shadows of the colossuses stretched across the

deserted squares; occasionally in the distance the smoke of a still

burning sacrifice would escape through the bronze tiling, and the heavy

breeze would waft the odours of aromatics blended with the scent of the

sea and the exhalation from the sun-heated walls. The motionless waves

shone around Carthage, for the moon was spreading her light at once upon

the mountain-circled gulf and upon the lake of Tunis, where flamingoes

formed long rose-coloured lines amid the banks of sand, while further

on beneath the catacombs the great salt lagoon shimmered like a piece

of silver. The blue vault of heaven sank on the horizon in one direction

into the dustiness of the plains, and in the other into the mists of the

sea, and on the summit of the Acropolis, the pyramidal cypress trees,

fringing the temple of Eschmoun, swayed murmuring like the regular waves

that beat slowly along the mole beneath the ramparts.

Salammbô ascended to the terrace of her palace, supported by a female

slave who carried an iron dish filled with live coals.

In the middle of the terrace there was a small ivory bed covered

with lynx skins, and cushions made with the feathers of the parrot, a

fatidical animal consecrated to the gods; and at the four corners rose

four long perfuming-pans filled with nard, incense, cinnamomum, and

myrrh. The slave lit the perfumes. Salammbô looked at the polar star;

she slowly saluted the four points of heaven, and knelt down on the

ground in the azure dust which was strewn with golden stars in imitation

of the firmament. Then with both elbows against her sides, her fore-arms

straight and her hands open, she threw back her head beneath the rays of

the moon, and said:

“O Rabetna!—Baalet!—Tanith!” and her voice was lengthened in

a plaintive fashion as if calling to some one. “Anaïtis! Astarte!

Derceto! Astoreth! Mylitta! Athara! Elissa! Tiratha!—By the hidden

symbols, by the resounding sistra,—by the furrows of the earth,—by

the eternal silence and by the eternal fruitfulness,—mistress of the

gloomy sea and of the azure shores, O Queen of the watery world, all

hail!”

She swayed her whole body twice or thrice, and then cast herself face

downwards in the dust with both arms outstretched.

But the slave nimbly raised her, for according to the rites someone must

catch the suppliant at the moment of his prostration; this told him

that the gods accepted him, and Salammbô’s nurse never failed in this

pious duty.

Some merchants from Darytian Gætulia had brought her to Carthage when

quite young, and after her enfranchisement she would not forsake her old

masters, as was shown by her right ear, which was pierced with a large

hole. A petticoat of many-coloured stripes fitted closely on her hips,

and fell to her ankles, where two tin rings clashed together. Her

somewhat flat face was yellow like her tunic. Silver bodkins of great

length formed a sun behind her head. She wore a coral button on the

nostril, and she stood beside the bed more erect than a Hermes, and with

her eyelids cast down.

Salammbô walked to the edge of the terrace; her eyes swept the horizon

for an instant, and then were lowered upon the sleeping town, while the

sigh that she heaved swelled her bosom, and gave an undulating movement

to the whole length of the long white simar which hung without clasp or

girdle about her. Her curved and painted sandals were hidden beneath

a heap of emeralds, and a net of purple thread was filled with her

disordered hair.

But she raised her head to gaze upon the moon, and murmured, mingling

her speech with fragments of hymns:

“How lightly turnest thou, supported by the impalpable ether! It

brightens about thee, and ’tis the stir of thine agitation that

distributes the winds and fruitful dews. According as thou dost wax

and wane the eyes of cats and spots of panthers lengthen or grow short.

Wives shriek thy name in the pangs of childbirth! Thou makest the shells

to swell, the wine to bubble, and the corpse to putrefy! Thou formest

the pearls at the bottom of the sea!

“And every germ, O goddess! ferments in the dark depths of thy

moisture.

“When thou appearest, quietness is spread abroad upon the earth; the

flowers close, the waves are soothed, wearied man stretches his breast

toward thee, and the world with its oceans and mountains looks at

itself in thy face as in a mirror. Thou art white, gentle, luminous,

immaculate, helping, purifying, serene!”

The crescent of the moon was then over the mountain of the Hot Springs,

in the hollow formed by its two summits, on the other side of the gulf.

Below it there was a little star, and all around it a pale circle.

Salammbô went on:

“But thou art a terrible mistress!—Monsters, terrifying phantoms,

and lying dreams come from thee; thine eyes devour the stones of

buildings, and the apes are ever ill each time thou growest young again.

“Whither goest thou? Why dost thou change thy forms continually? Now,

slender and curved thou glidest through space like a mastless galley;

and then, amid the stars, thou art like a shepherd keeping his flock.

Shining and round, thou dost graze the mountain-tops like the wheel of a

chariot.

“O Tanith! thou dost love me? I have looked so much on thee! But no!

thou sailest through thine azure, and I—I remain on the motionless

earth.

“Taanach, take your nebal and play softly on the silver string, for my

heart is sad!”

The slave lifted a sort of harp of ebony wood, taller than herself,

and triangular in shape like a delta; she fixed the point in a crystal

globe, and with both hands began to play.

The sounds followed one another hurried and deep, like the buzzing of

bees, and with increasing sonorousness floated away into the night with

the complaining of the waves, and the rustling of the great trees on the

summit of the Acropolis.

“Hush!” cried Salammbô.

“What ails you, mistress? The blowing of the breeze, the passing of a

cloud, everything disquiets you just now!”

“I do not know,” she said.

“You are wearied with too long prayers!”

“Oh! Tanaach, I would fain be dissolved in them like a flower in

wine!”

“Perhaps it is the smoke of your perfumes?”

“No!” said Salammbô; “the spirit of the gods dwells in fragrant

odours.”

Then the slave spoke to her of her father. It was thought that he had

gone towards the amber country, behind the pillars of Melkarth. “But

if he does not return,” she said, “you must nevertheless, since it

was his will, choose a husband among the sons of the Ancients, and then

your grief will pass away in a man’s arms.”

“Why?” asked the young girl. All those that she had seen had

horrified her with their fallow-deer laughter and their coarse limbs.

“Sometimes, Tanaach, from the depths of my being there exhale as it

were hot fumes heavier than the vapours from a volcano. Voices call me,

a globe of fire rolls and mounts within my bosom, it stifles me, I am at

the point of death; and then, something sweet, flowing from my brow to

my feet, passes through my flesh—it is a caress enfolding me, and I

feel myself crushed as if some god were stretched upon me. Oh! would

that I could lose myself in the mists of the night, the waters of the

fountains, the sap of the trees, that I could issue from my body, and be

but a breath, or a ray, and glide, mount up to thee, O Mother!”

She raised her arms to their full length, arching her form, which in

its long garment was as pale and light as the moon. Then she fell back,

panting, on the ivory couch; but Taanach passed an amber necklace with

dolphin’s teeth about her neck to banish terrors, and Salammbô said

in an almost stifled voice: “Go and bring me Schahabarim.”

Her father had not wished her to enter the college of priestesses,

nor even to be made at all acquainted with the popular Tanith. He was

reserving her for some alliance that might serve his political ends; so

that Salammbô lived alone in the midst of the palace. Her mother was

long since dead.

She had grown up with abstinences, fastings and purifications, always

surrounded by grave and exquisite things, her body saturated with

perfumes, and her soul filled with prayers. She had never tasted wine,

nor eaten meat, nor touched an unclean animal, nor set her heels in the

house of death.

She knew nothing of obscene images, for as each god was manifested

in different forms, the same principle often received the witness

of contradictory cults, and Salammbô worshipped the goddess in her

sidereal presentation. An influence had descended upon the maiden from

the moon; when the planet passed diminishing away, Salammbô grew weak.

She languished the whole day long, and revived at evening. During an

eclipse she nearly died.

But Rabetna, in jealousy, revenged herself for the virginity withdrawn

from her sacrifices, and she tormented Salammbô with possessions, all

the stronger for being vague, which were spread through this belief and

excited by it.

Unceasingly was Hamilcar’s daughter disquieted about Tanith. She had

learned her adventures, her travels, and all her names, which she would

repeat without their having any distinct signification for her. In

order to penetrate into the depths of her dogma, she wished to become

acquainted, in the most secret part of the temple, with the old idol in

the magnificent mantle, whereon depended the destinies of Carthage, for

the idea of a god did not stand out clearly from his representation,

and to hold, or even see the image of one, was to take away part of his

virtue, and in a measure to rule him.

But Salammbô turned around. She had recognised the sound of the golden

bells which Schahabarim wore at the hem of his garment.

He ascended the staircases; then at the threshold of the terrace he

stopped and folded his arms.

His sunken eyes shone like the lamps of a sepulchre; his long thin body

floated in its linen robe which was weighted by the bells, the latter

alternating with balls of emeralds at his heels. He had feeble limbs, an

oblique skull and a pointed chin; his skin seemed cold to the touch, and

his yellow face, which was deeply furrowed with wrinkles, was as if it

contracted in a longing, in an everlasting grief.

He was the high priest of Tanith, and it was he who had educated

Salammbô.

“Speak!” he said. “What will you?”

“I hoped—you had almost promised me—” She stammered and was

confused; then suddenly: “Why do you despise me? what have I forgotten

in the rites? You are my master, and you told me that no one was so

accomplished in the things pertaining to the goddess as I; but there are

some of which you will not speak. Is it so, O father?”

Schahabarim remembered Hamilcar’s orders, and replied:

“No, I have nothing more to teach you!”

“A genius,” she resumed, “impels me to this love. I have climbed

the steps of Eschmoun, god of the planets and intelligences; I have

slept beneath the golden olive of Melkarth, patron of the Tyrian

colonies; I have pushed open the doors of Baal-Khamon, the enlightener

and fertiliser; I have sacrificed to the subterranean Kabiri, to the

gods of woods, winds, rivers and mountains; but, can you understand?

they are all too far away, too high, too insensible, while she—I feel

her mingled in my life; she fills my soul, and I quiver with inward

startings, as though she were leaping in order to escape. Methinks I am

about to hear her voice, and see her face, lightnings dazzle me and then

I sink back again into the darkness.”

Schahabarim was silent. She entreated him with suppliant looks. At

last he made a sign for the dismissal of the slave, who was not of

Chanaanitish race. Taanach disappeared, and Schahabarim, raising one arm

in the air, began:

“Before the gods darkness alone was, and a breathing stirred dull

and indistinct as the conscience of a man in a dream. It contracted,

creating Desire and Cloud, and from Desire and Cloud there issued

primitive Matter. This was a water, muddy, black, icy and deep. It

contained senseless monsters, incoherent portions of the forms to be

born, which are painted on the walls of the sanctuaries.

“Then Matter condensed. It became an egg. It burst. One half formed

the earth and the other the firmament. Sun, moon, winds and clouds

appeared, and at the crash of the thunder intelligent creatures awoke.

Then Eschmoun spread himself in the starry sphere; Khamon beamed in

the sun; Melkarth thrust him with his arms behind Gades; the Kabiri

descended beneath the volcanoes, and Rabetna like a nurse bent over the

world pouring out her light like milk, and her night like a mantle.”

“And then?” she said.

He had related the secret of the origins to her, to divert her from

sublimer prospects; but the maiden’s desire kindled again at his last

words, and Schahabarim, half yielding resumed:

“She inspires and governs the loves of men.”

“The loves of men!” repeated Salammbô dreamily.

“She is the soul of Carthage,” continued the priest; “and although

she is everywhere diffused, it is here that she dwells, beneath the

sacred veil.”

“O father!” cried Salammbô, “I shall see her, shall I not? you

will bring me to her! I had long been hesitating; I am devoured with

curiosity to see her form. Pity! help me! let us go?”

He repulsed her with a vehement gesture that was full of pride.

“Never! Do you not know that it means death? The hermaphrodite Baals

are unveiled to us alone who are men in understanding and women in

weakness. Your desire is sacrilege; be satisfied with the knowledge that

you possess!”

She fell upon her knees placing two fingers against her ears in token of

repentance; and crushed by the priest’s words, and filled at once with

anger against him, with terror and humiliation, she burst into sobs.

Schahabarim remained erect, and more insensible than the stones of the

terrace. He looked down upon her quivering at his feet, and felt a kind

of joy on seeing her suffer for his divinity whom he himself could not

wholly embrace. The birds were already singing, a cold wind was blowing,

and little clouds were drifting in the paling sky.

Suddenly he perceived on the horizon, behind Tunis, what looked like

slight mists trailing along the ground; then these became a great

curtain of dust extending perpendicularly, and, amid the whirlwinds of

the thronging mass, dromedaries’ heads, lances and shields appeared.

It was the army of the Barbarians advancing upon Carthage.

CHAPTER IV BENEATH THE WALLS OF CARTHAGE

Some country people, riding on asses or running on foot, arrived in the

town, pale, breathless, and mad with fear. They were flying before the

army. It had accomplished the journey from Sicca in three days, in order

to reach Carthage and wholly exterminate it.

The gates were shut. The Barbarians appeared almost immediately; but

they stopped in the middle of the isthmus, on the edge of the lake.

At first they made no hostile announcement. Several approached with palm

branches in their hands. They were driven back with arrows, so great was

the terror.

In the morning and at nightfall prowlers would sometimes wander along

the walls. A little man carefully wrapped in a cloak, and with his face

concealed beneath a very low visor, was especially noticed. He would

remain whole hours gazing at the aqueduct, and so persistently that he

doubtless wished to mislead the Carthaginians as to his real designs.

Another man, a sort of giant who walked bareheaded, used to accompany

him.

But Carthage was defended throughout the whole breadth of the isthmus:

first by a trench, then by a grassy rampart, and lastly by a wall thirty

cubits high, built of freestone, and in two storys. It contained stables

for three hundred elephants with stores for their caparisons, shackles,

and food; other stables again for four thousand horses with supplies

of barley and harness, and barracks for twenty thousand soldiers with

armour and all materials of war. Towers rose from the second story, all

provided with battlements, and having bronze bucklers hung on cramps on

the outside.

This first line of wall gave immediate shelter to Malqua, the sailors’

and dyers’ quarter. Masts might be seen whereon purple sails were

drying, and on the highest terraces clay furnaces for heating the pickle

were visible.

Behind, the lofty houses of the city rose in an ampitheatre of cubical

form. They were built of stone, planks, shingle, reeds, shells, and

beaten earth. The woods belonging to the temples were like lakes of

verdure in this mountain of diversely-coloured blocks. It was levelled

at unequal distances by the public squares, and was cut from top to

bottom by countless intersecting lanes. The enclosures of the three old

quarters which are now lost might be distinguished; they rose here

and there like great reefs, or extended in enormous fronts, blackened,

half-covered with flowers, and broadly striped by the casting of filth,

while streets passed through their yawning apertures like rivers beneath

bridges.

The hill of the Acropolis, in the centre of Byrsa, was hidden beneath a

disordered array of monuments. There were temples with wreathed columns

bearing bronze capitals and metal chains, cones of dry stones with bands

of azure, copper cupolas, marble architraves, Babylonian buttresses,

obelisks poised on their points like inverted torches. Peristyles

reached to pediments; volutes were displayed through colonnades; granite

walls supported tile partitions; the whole mounting, half-hidden, the

one above the other in a marvellous and incomprehensible fashion. In it

might be felt the succession of the ages, and, as it were, the memorials

of forgotten fatherlands.

Behind the Acropolis the Mappalian road, which was lined with tombs,

extended through red lands in a straight line from the shore to the

catacombs; then spacious dwellings occurred at intervals in the gardens,

and this third quarter, Megara, which was the new town, reached as far

as the edge of the cliff, where rose a giant pharos that blazed forth

every night.

In this fashion was Carthage displayed before the soldiers quartered in

the plain.

They could recognise the markets and crossways in the distance, and

disputed with one another as to the sites of the temples. Khamon’s,

fronting the Syssitia, had golden tiles; Melkarth, to the left of

Eschmoun, had branches of coral on its roofing; beyond, Tanith’s

copper cupola swelled among the palm trees; the dark Moloch was below

the cisterns, in the direction of the pharos. At the angles of the

pediments, on the tops of the walls, at the corners of the squares,

everywhere, divinities with hideous heads might be seen, colossal or

squat, with enormous bellies, or immoderately flattened, opening their

jaws, extending their arms, and holding forks, chains or javelins in

their hands; while the blue of the sea stretched away behind the streets

which were rendered still steeper by the perspective.

They were filled from morning till evening with a tumultuous people;

young boys shaking little bells, shouted at the doors of the baths; the

shops for hot drinks smoked, the air resounded with the noise of anvils,

the white cocks, sacred to the Sun, crowed on the terraces, the oxen

that were being slaughtered bellowed in the temples, slaves ran about

with baskets on their heads; and in the depths of the porticoes a priest

would sometimes appear, draped in a dark cloak, barefooted, and wearing

a pointed cap.

The spectacle afforded by Carthage irritated the Barbarians; they

admired it and execrated it, and would have liked both to annihilate it

and to dwell in it. But what was there in the Military Harbour defended

by a triple wall? Then behind the town, at the back of Megara, and

higher than the Acropolis, appeared Hamilcar’s palace.

Matho’s eyes were directed thither every moment. He would ascend the

olive trees and lean over with his hand spread out above his eyebrows.

The gardens were empty, and the red door with its black cross remained

constantly shut.

More than twenty times he walked round the ramparts, seeking some breach

by which he might enter. One night he threw himself into the gulf and

swam for three hours at a stretch. He reached the foot of the Mappalian

quarter and tried to climb up the face of the cliff. He covered his

knees with blood, broke his nails, and then fell back into the waves and

returned.

His impotence exasperated him. He was jealous of this Carthage which

contained Salammbô, as if of some one who had possessed her. His

nervelessness left him to be replaced by a mad and continual eagerness

for action. With flaming cheek, angry eyes, and hoarse voice, he would

walk with rapid strides through the camp; or seated on the shore he

would scour his great sword with sand. He shot arrows at the passing

vultures. His heart overflowed into frenzied speech.

“Give free course to your wrath like a runaway chariot,” said

Spendius. “Shout, blaspheme, ravage and slay. Grief is allayed with

blood, and since you cannot sate your love, gorge your hate; it will

sustain you!”

Matho resumed the command of his soldiers. He drilled them pitilessly.

He was respected for his courage and especially for his strength.

Moreover he inspired a sort of mystic dread, and it was believed that

he conversed at night with phantoms. The other captains were animated

by his example. The army soon grew disciplined. From their houses the

Carthaginians could hear the bugle-flourishes that regulated their

exercises. At last the Barbarians drew near.

To crush them in the isthmus it would have been necessary for two armies

to take them simultaneously in the rear, one disembarking at the end of

the gulf of Utica, and the second at the mountain of the Hot Springs.

But what could be done with the single sacred Legion, mustering at most

six thousand men? If the enemy bent towards the east they would join the

nomads and intercept the commerce of the desert. If they fell back to

the west, Numidia would rise. Finally, lack of provisions would

sooner or later lead them to devastate the surrounding country like

grasshoppers, and the rich trembled for their fine country-houses, their

vineyards and their cultivated lands.

Hanno proposed atrocious and impracticable measures, such as promising

a heavy sum for every Barbarian’s head, or setting fire to their camp

with ships and machines. His colleague Gisco, on the other hand, wished

them to be paid. But the Ancients detested him owing to his popularity;

for they dreaded the risk of a master, and through terror of monarchy

strove to weaken whatever contributed to it or might re-establish it.

Outside the fortification there were people of another race and of

unknown origin, all hunters of the porcupine, and eaters of shell-fish

and serpents. They used to go into caves to catch hyenas alive, and

amuse themselves by making them run in the evening on the sands of

Megara between the stelæ of the tombs. Their huts, which were made

of mud and wrack, hung on the cliff like swallows’ nests. There they

lived, without government and without gods, pell-mell, completely naked,

at once feeble and fierce, and execrated by the people of all time on

account of their unclean food. One morning the sentries perceived that

they were all gone.

At last some members of the Great Council arrived at a decision. They

came to the camp without necklaces or girdles, and in open sandals

like neighbours. They walked at a quiet pace, waving salutations to

the captains, or stopped to speak to the soldiers, saying that all was

finished and that justice was about to be done to their claims.

Many of them saw a camp of Mercenaries for the first time. Instead of

the confusion which they had pictured to themselves, there prevailed

everywhere terrible silence and order. A grassy rampart formed a lofty

wall round the army immovable by the shock of catapults. The ground in

the streets was sprinkled with fresh water; through the holes in the

tents they could perceive tawny eyeballs gleaming in the shade. The

piles of pikes and hanging panoplies dazzled them like mirrors. They

conversed in low tones. They were afraid of upsetting something with

their long robes.

The soldiers requested provisions, undertaking to pay for them out of

the money that was due.

Oxen, sheep, guinea fowl, fruit and lupins were sent to them, with

smoked scombri, that excellent scombri which Carthage dispatched to

every port. But they walked scornfully around the magnificent cattle,

and disparaging what they coveted, offered the worth of a pigeon for

a ram, or the price of a pomegranate for three goats. The Eaters of

Uncleanness came forward as arbitrators, and declared that they were

being duped. Then they drew their swords with threats to slay.

Commissaries of the Great Council wrote down the number of years for

which pay was due to each soldier. But it was no longer possible to know

how many Mercenaries had been engaged, and the Ancients were dismayed at

the enormous sum which they would have to pay. The reserve of silphium

must be sold, and the trading towns taxed; the Mercenaries would

grow impatient; Tunis was already with them; and the rich, stunned by

Hanno’s ragings and his colleague’s reproaches, urged any citizens

who might know a Barbarian to go to see him immediately in order to win

back his friendship, and to speak him fair. Such a show of confidence

would soothe them.

Traders, scribes, workers in the arsenal, and whole families visited the

Barbarians.

The soldiers allowed all the Carthaginians to come in, but by a single

passage so narrow that four men abreast jostled one another in it.

Spendius, standing against the barrier, had them carefully searched;

facing him Matho was examining the multitude, trying to recognise some

one whom he might have seen at Salammbô’s palace.

The camp was like a town, so full of people and of movement was it. The

two distinct crowds mingled without blending, one dressed in linen or

wool, with felt caps like fir-cones, and the other clad in iron and

wearing helmets. Amid serving men and itinerant vendors there moved

women of all nations, as brown as ripe dates, as greenish as olives,

as yellow as oranges, sold by sailors, picked out of dens, stolen from

caravans, taken in the sacking of towns, women that were jaded with love

so long as they were young, and plied with blows when they were old, and

that died in routs on the roadsides among the baggage and the abandoned

beasts of burden. The wives of the nomads had square, tawny robes of

dromedary’s hair swinging at their heels; musicians from Cyrenaica,

wrapped in violet gauze and with painted eyebrows, sang, squatting on

mats; old Negresses with hanging breasts gathered the animals’ dung

that was drying in the sun to light their fires; the Syracusan women had

golden plates in their hair; the Lusitanians had necklaces of shells;

the Gauls wore wolf skins upon their white bosoms; and sturdy children,

vermin-covered, naked and uncircumcised, butted with their heads against

passers-by, or came behind them like young tigers to bite their hands.

The Carthaginians walked through the camp, surprised at the quantities

of things with which it was running over. The most miserable were

melancholy, and the rest dissembled their anxiety.

The soldiers struck them on the shoulder, and exhorted them to be gay.

As soon as they saw any one, they invited him to their amusements. If

they were playing at discus, they would manage to crush his feet, or

if at boxing to fracture his jaw with the very first blow. The slingers

terrified the Carthaginians with their slings, the Psylli with their

vipers, and the horsemen with their horses, while their victims,

addicted as they were to peaceful occupations, bent their heads and

tried to smile at all these outrages. Some, in order to show themselves

brave, made signs that they should like to become soldiers. They were

set to split wood and to curry mules. They were buckled up in armour,

and rolled like casks through the streets of the camp. Then, when

they were about to leave, the Mercenaries plucked out their hair with

grotesque contortions.

But many, from foolishness or prejudice, innocently believed that all

the Carthaginians were very rich, and they walked behind them entreating

them to grant them something. They requested everything that they

thought fine: a ring, a girdle, sandals, the fringe of a robe, and when

the despoiled Carthaginian cried—“But I have nothing left. What

do you want?” they would reply, “Your wife!” Others even said,

“Your life!”

The military accounts were handed to the captains, read to the soldiers,

and definitively approved. Then they claimed tents; they received them.

Next the polemarchs of the Greeks demanded some of the handsome suits of

armour that were manufactured at Carthage; the Great Council voted

sums of money for their purchase. But it was only fair, so the horsemen

pretended, that the Republic should indemnify them for their horses;

one had lost three at such a siege, another, five during such a march,

another, fourteen in the precipices. Stallions from Hecatompylos were

offered to them, but they preferred money.

Next they demanded that they should be paid in money (in pieces of

money, and not in leathern coins) for all the corn that was owing to

them, and at the highest price that it had fetched during the war; so

that they exacted four hundred times as much for a measure of meal as

they had given for a sack of wheat. Such injustice was exasperating; but

it was necessary, nevertheless, to submit.

Then the delegates from the soldiers and from the Great Council swore

renewed friendship by the Genius of Carthage and the gods of the

Barbarians. They exchanged excuses and caresses with oriental

demonstrativeness and verbosity. Then the soldiers claimed, as a proof

of friendship, the punishment of those who had estranged them from the

Republic.

Their meaning, it was pretended, was not understood, and they explained

themselves more clearly by saying that they must have Hanno’s head.

Several times a day, they left their camp, and walked along the foot of

the walls, shouting a demand that the Suffet’s head should be thrown

to them, and holding out their robes to receive it.

The Great Council would perhaps have given way but for a last exaction,

more outrageous than the rest; they demanded maidens, chosen from

illustrious families, in marriage for their chiefs. It was an idea

which had emanated from Spendius, and which many thought most simple and

practicable. But the assumption of their desire to mix with Punic blood

made the people indignant; and they were bluntly told that they were to

receive no more. Then they exclaimed that they had been deceived,

and that if their pay did not arrive within three days, they would

themselves go and take it in Carthage.

The bad faith of the Mercenaries was not so complete as their enemies

thought. Hamilcar had made them extravagant promises, vague, it is true,

but at the same time solemn and reiterated. They might have believed

that when they disembarked at Carthage the town would be abandoned to

them, and that they should have treasures divided among them; and

when they saw that scarcely their wages would be paid, the disillusion

touched their pride no less than their greed.

Had not Dionysius, Pyrrhus, Agathocles, and the generals of Alexander

furnished examples of marvellous good fortune? Hercules, whom the

Chanaanites confounded with the sun, was the ideal which shone on the

horizon of armies. They knew that simple soldiers had worn diadems, and

the echoes of crumbling empires would furnish dreams to the Gaul in

his oak forest, to the Ethiopian amid his sands. But there was a nation

always ready to turn courage to account; and the robber driven from

his tribe, the patricide wandering on the roads, the perpetrator of

sacrilege pursued by the gods, all who were starving or in despair

strove to reach the port where the Carthaginian broker was recruiting

soldiers. Usually the Republic kept its promises. This time, however,

the eagerness of its avarice had brought it into perilous disgrace.

Numidians, Libyans, the whole of Africa was about to fall upon Carthage.

Only the sea was open to it, and there it met with the Romans; so that,

like a man assailed by murderers, it felt death all around it.

It was quite necessary to have recourse to Gisco, and the Barbarians

accepted his intervention. One morning they saw the chains of the

harbour lowered, and three flat-bottomed boats passing through the canal

of Tænia entered the lake.

Gisco was visible on the first at the prow. Behind him rose an enormous

chest, higher than a catafalque, and furnished with rings like hanging

crowns. Then appeared the legion of interpreters, with their hair

dressed like sphinxes, and with parrots tattooed on their breasts.

Friends and slaves followed, all without arms, and in such numbers that

they shouldered one another. The three long, dangerously-loaded barges

advanced amid the shouts of the onlooking army.

As soon as Gisco disembarked the soldiers ran to him. He had a sort of

tribune erected with knapsacks, and declared that he should not depart

before he had paid them all in full.

There was an outburst of applause, and it was a long time before he was

able to speak.

Then he censured the wrongs done to the Republic, and to the Barbarians;

the fault lay with a few mutineers who had alarmed Carthage by their

violence. The best proof of good intention on the part of the latter was

that it was he, the eternal adversary of the Suffet Hanno, who was sent

to them. They must not credit the people with the folly of desiring to

provoke brave men, nor with ingratitude enough not to recognise their

services; and Gisco began to pay the soldiers, commencing with the

Libyans. As they had declared that the lists were untruthful, he made no

use of them.

They defiled before him according to nationality, opening their fingers

to show the number of their years of service; they were marked in

succession with green paint on the left arm; the scribes dipped into the

yawning coffer, while others made holes with a style on a sheet of lead.

A man passed walking heavily like an ox.

“Come up beside me,” said the Suffet, suspecting some fraud; “how

many years have you served?”

“Twelve,” replied the Libyan.

Gisco slipped his fingers under his chin, for the chin-piece of the

helmet used in course of time to occasion two callosities there; these

were called carobs, and “to have the carobs” was an expression used

to denote a veteran.

“Thief!” exclaimed the Suffet, “your shoulders ought to have what

your face lacks!” and tearing off his tunic he laid bare his back which

was covered with a bleeding scab; he was a labourer from Hippo-Zarytus.

Hootings were raised, and he was decapitated.

As soon as night fell, Spendius went and roused the Libyans, and said to

them:

“When the Ligurians, Greeks, Balearians, and men of Italy are paid,

they will return. But as for you, you will remain in Africa, scattered

through your tribes, and without any means of defence! It will be then

that the Republic will take its revenge! Mistrust the journey! Are you

going to believe everything that is said? Both the Suffets are agreed,

and this one is imposing on you! Remember the Island of Bones, and

Xanthippus, whom they sent back to Sparta in a rotten galley!”

“How are we to proceed?” they asked.

“Reflect!” said Spendius.

The two following days were spent in paying the men of Magdala, Leptis,

and Hecatompylos; Spendius went about among the Gauls.

“They are paying off the Libyans, and then they will discharge the

Greeks, the Balearians, the Asiatics and all the rest! But you, who are

few in number, will receive nothing! You will see your native lands

no more! You will have no ships, and they will kill you to save your

food!”

The Gauls came to the Suffet. Autaritus, he whom he had wounded at

Hamilcar’s palace, put questions to him, but was repelled by the

slaves, and disappeared swearing he would be revenged.

The demands and complaints multiplied. The most obstinate penetrated at

night into the Suffet’s tent; they took his hands and sought to move

him by making him feel their toothless mouths, their wasted arms, and

the scars of their wounds. Those who had not yet been paid were growing

angry, those who had received the money demanded more for their horses;

and vagabonds and outlaws assumed soldiers’ arms and declared that

they were being forgotten. Every minute there arrived whirlwinds of men,

as it were; the tents strained and fell; the multitude, thick pressed

between the ramparts of the camp, swayed with loud shouts from the gates

to the centre. When the tumult grew excessively violent Gisco would rest

one elbow on his ivory sceptre and stand motionless looking at the sea

with his fingers buried in his beard.

Matho frequently went off to speak with Spendius; then he would again

place himself in front of the Suffet, and Gisco could feel his eyes

continually like two flaming phalaricas darted against him. Several

times they hurled reproaches at each other over the heads of the crowd,

but without making themselves heard. The distribution, meanwhile,

continued, and the Suffet found expedients to remove every obstacle.

The Greeks tried to quibble about differences in currency, but he

furnished them with such explanations that they retired without a

murmur. The Negroes demanded white shells such as are used for trading

in the interior of Africa, but when he offered to send to Carthage for

them they accepted money like the rest.

But the Balearians had been promised something better, namely, women.

The Suffet replied that a whole caravan of maidens was expected for

them, but the journey was long and would require six moons more. When

they were fat and well rubbed with benjamin they should be sent in ships

to the ports of the Balearians.

Suddenly Zarxas, now handsome and vigorous, leaped like a mountebank

upon the shoulders of his friends and cried:

“Have you reserved any of them for the corpses?” at the same time

pointing to the gate of Khamon in Carthage.

The brass plates with which it was furnished from top to bottom shone

in the sun’s latest fires, and the Barbarians believed that they could

discern on it a trail of blood. Every time that Gisco wished to speak

their shouts began again. At last he descended with measured steps, and

shut himself up in his tent.

When he left it at sunrise his interpreters, who used to sleep outside,

did not stir; they lay on their backs with their eyes fixed, their

tongues between their teeth, and their faces of a bluish colour. White

mucus flowed from their nostrils, and their limbs were stiff, as if

they had all been frozen by the cold during the night. Each had a little

noose of rushes round his neck.

From that time onward the rebellion was unchecked. The murder of the

Balearians which had been recalled by Zarxas strengthened the distrust

inspired by Spendius. They imagined that the Republic was always trying

to deceive them. An end must be put to it! The interpreters should be

dispensed with! Zarxas sang war songs with a sling around his head;

Autaritus brandished his great sword; Spendius whispered a word to one

or gave a dagger to another. The boldest endeavoured to pay themselves,

while those who were less frenzied wished to have the distribution

continued. No one now relinquished his arms, and the anger of all

combined into a tumultuous hatred of Gisco.

Some got up beside him. So long as they vociferated abuse they were

listened to with patience; but if they tried to utter the least word in

his behalf they were immediately stoned, or their heads were cut off

by a sabre-stroke from behind. The heap of knapsacks was redder than an

altar.

They became terrible after their meal and when they had drunk wine! This

was an enjoyment forbidden in the Punic armies under pain of death, and

they raised their cups in the direction of Carthage in derision of its

discipline. Then they returned to the slaves of the exchequer and again

began to kill. The word strike, though different in each language, was

understood by all.

Gisco was well aware that he was being abandoned by his country; but in

spite of its ingratitude he would not dishonour it. When they reminded

him that they had been promised ships, he swore by Moloch to provide

them himself at his own expense, and pulling off his necklace of blue

stones he threw it into the crowd as the pledge of his oath.

Then the Africans claimed the corn in accordance with the engagements

made by the Great Council. Gisco spread out the accounts of the Syssitia

traced in violet pigment on sheep skins; and read out all that had

entered Carthage month by month and day by day.

Suddenly he stopped with gaping eyes, as if he had just discovered his

sentence of death among the figures.

The Ancients had, in fact, fraudulently reduced them, and the corn sold

during the most calamitous period of the war was set down at so low a

rate that, blindness apart, it was impossible to believe it.

“Speak!” they shouted. “Louder! Ah! he is trying to lie, the

coward! Don’t trust him.”

For some time he hesitated. At last he resumed his task.

The soldiers, without suspecting that they were being deceived, accepted

the accounts of the Syssitia as true. But the abundance that had

prevailed at Carthage made them furiously jealous. They broke open the

sycamore chest; it was three parts empty. They had seen such sums coming

out of it, that they thought it inexhaustible; Gisco must have buried

some in his tent. They scaled the knapsacks. Matho led them, and as they

shouted “The money! the money!” Gisco at last replied:

“Let your general give it to you!”

He looked them in the face without speaking, with his great yellow eyes,

and his long face that was paler than his beard. An arrow, held by its

feathers, hung from the large gold ring in his ear, and a stream of

blood was trickling from his tiara upon his shoulder.

At a gesture from Matho all advanced. Gisco held out his arms; Spendius

tied his wrists with a slip knot; another knocked him down, and he

disappeared amid the disorder of the crowd which was stumbling over the

knapsacks.

They sacked his tent. Nothing was found in it except things

indispensable to life; and, on a closer search, three images of Tanith,

and, wrapped up in an ape’s skin, a black stone which had fallen from

the moon. Many Carthaginians had chosen to accompany him; they were

eminent men, and all belonged to the war party.

They were dragged outside the tents and thrown into the pit used for the

reception of filth. They were tied with iron chains around the body to

solid stakes, and were offered food at the point of the javelin.

Autaritus overwhelmed them with invectives as he inspected them, but

being quite ignorant of his language they made no reply; and the Gaul

from time to time threw pebbles at their faces to make them cry out.

The next day a sort of languor took possession of the army. Now that

their anger was over they were seized with anxiety. Matho was suffering

from vague melancholy. It seemed to him that Salammbô had indirectly

been insulted. These rich men were a kind of appendage to her person.

He sat down in the night on the edge of the pit, and recognised in their

groanings something of the voice of which his heart was full.

All, however, upbraided the Libyans, who alone had been paid. But while

national antipathies revived, together with personal hatreds, it was

felt that it would be perilous to give way to them. Reprisals after

such an outrage would be formidable. It was necessary, therefore, to

anticipate the vengeance of Carthage. Conventions and harangues never

ceased. Every one spoke, no one was listened to; Spendius, usually so

loquacious, shook his head at every proposal.

One evening he asked Matho carelessly whether there were not springs in

the interior of the town.

“Not one!” replied Matho.

The next day Spendius drew him aside to the bank of the lake.

“Master!” said the former slave, “If your heart is dauntless, I

will bring you into Carthage.”

“How?” repeated the other, panting.

“Swear to execute all my commands and to follow me like a shadow!”

Then Matho, raising his arm towards the planet of Chabar, exclaimed:

“By Tanith, I swear!”

Spendius resumed:

“To-morrow after sunset you will wait for me at the foot of the

aqueduct between the ninth and tenth arcades. Bring with you an iron

pick, a crestless helmet, and leathern sandals.”

The aqueduct of which he spoke crossed the entire isthmus obliquely,—a

considerable work, afterwards enlarged by the Romans. In spite of her

disdain of other nations, Carthage had awkwardly borrowed this novel

invention from them, just as Rome herself had built Punic galleys; and

five rows of superposed arches, of a dumpy kind of architecture, with

buttresses at their foot and lions’ heads at the top, reached to

the western part of the Acropolis, where they sank beneath the town to

incline what was nearly a river into the cisterns of Megara.

Spendius met Matho here at the hour agreed upon. He fastened a sort of

harpoon to the end of a cord and whirled it rapidly like a sling; the

iron instrument caught fast, and they began to climb up the wall, the

one after the other.

But when they had ascended to the first story the cramp fell back every

time that they threw it, and in order to discover some fissure they had

to walk along the edge of the cornice. At every row of arches they found

that it became narrower. Then the cord relaxed. Several times it nearly

broke.

At last they reached the upper platform. Spendius stooped down from time

to time to feel the stones with his hand.

“Here it is,” he said; “let us begin!” And leaning on the

pick which Matho had brought they succeeded in dislodging one of the

flagstones.

In the distance they perceived a troop of horse-men galloping on horses

without bridles. Their golden bracelets leaped in the vague drapings

of their cloaks. A man could be seen in front crowned with ostrich

feathers, and galloping with a lance in each hand.

“Narr’ Havas!” exclaimed Matho.

“What matter?” returned Spendius, and he leaped into the hole which

they had just made by removing the flagstone.

Matho at his command tried to thrust out one of the blocks. But he could

not move his elbows for want of room.

“We shall return,” said Spendius; “go in front.” Then they

ventured into the channel of water.

It reached to their waists. Soon they staggered, and were obliged to

swim. Their limbs knocked against the walls of the narrow duct. The

water flowed almost immediately beneath the stones above, and their

faces were torn by them. Then the current carried them away. Their

breasts were crushed with air heavier than that of a sepulchre, and

stretching themselves out as much as possible with their heads between

their arms and their legs close together, they passed like arrows into

the darkness, choking, gurgling, and almost dead. Suddenly all became

black before them, and the speed of the waters redoubled. They fell.

When they came to the surface again, they remained for a few minutes

extended on their backs, inhaling the air delightfully. Arcades, one

behind another, opened up amid large walls separating the various

basins. All were filled, and the water stretched in a single sheet

throughout the length of the cisterns. Through the air-holes in the

cupolas on the ceiling there fell a pale brightness which spread upon

the waves discs, as it were, of light, while the darkness round about

thickened towards the walls and threw them back to an indefinite

distance. The slightest sound made a great echo.

Spendius and Matho commenced to swim again, and passing through the

opening of the arches, traversed several chambers in succession. Two

other rows of smaller basins extended in a parallel direction on each

side. They lost themselves; they turned, and came back again. At last

something offered a resistance to their heels. It was the pavement of

the gallery that ran along the cisterns.

Then, advancing with great precautions, they felt along the wall to

find an outlet. But their feet slipped, and they fell into the great

centre-basins. They had to climb up again, and there they fell again.

They experienced terrible fatigue, which made them feel as if all their

limbs had been dissolved in the water while swimming. Their eyes closed;

they were in the agonies of death.

Spendius struck his hand against the bars of a grating. They shook it,

it gave way, and they found themselves on the steps of a staircase. A

door of bronze closed it above. With the point of a dagger they moved

the bar, which was opened from without, and suddenly the pure open air

surrounded them.

The night was filled with silence, and the sky seemed at an

extraordinary height. Clusters of trees projected over the long lines of

walls. The whole town was asleep. The fires of the outposts shone like

lost stars.

Spendius, who had spent three years in the ergastulum, was but

imperfectly acquainted with the different quarters. Matho conjectured

that to reach Hamilcar’s palace they ought to strike to the left and

cross the Mappalian district.

“No,” said Spendius, “take me to the temple of Tanith.”

Matho wished to speak.

“Remember!” said the former slave, and raising his arm he showed him

the glittering planet of Chabar.

Then Matho turned in silence towards the Acropolis.

They crept along the nopal hedges which bordered the paths. The water

trickled from their limbs upon the dust. Their damp sandals made no

noise; Spendius, with eyes that flamed more than torches, searched

the bushes at every step;—and he walked behind Matho with his hands

resting on the two daggers which he carried on his arms, and which hung

from below the armpit by a leathern band.

CHAPTER V TANITH

After leaving the gardens Matho and Spendius found themselves checked

by the rampart of Megara. But they discovered a breach in the great wall

and passed through.

The ground sloped downwards, forming a kind of very broad valley. It was

an exposed place.

“Listen,” said Spendius, “and first of all fear nothing! I shall

fulfil my promise—”

He stopped abruptly, and seemed to reflect as though searching for

words,—“Do you remember that time at sunrise when I showed Carthage

to you on Salammbô’s terrace? We were strong that day, but you would

listen to nothing!” Then in a grave voice: “Master, in the sanctuary

of Tanith there is a mysterious veil, which fell from heaven and which

covers the goddess.”

“I know,” said Matho.

Spendius resumed: “It is itself divine, for it forms part of her. The

gods reside where their images are. It is because Carthage possesses it

that Carthage is powerful.” Then leaning over to his ear: “I have

brought you with me to carry it off!”

Matho recoiled in horror. “Begone! look for some one else! I will not

help you in this execrable crime!”

“But Tanith is your enemy,” retorted Spendius; “she is persecuting

you and you are dying through her wrath. You will be revenged upon

her. She will obey you, and you will become almost immortal and

invincible.”

Matho bent his head. Spendius continued:

“We should succumb; the army would be annihilated of itself. We have

neither flight, nor succour, nor pardon to hope for! What chastisement

from the gods can you be afraid of since you will have their power in

your own hands? Would you rather die on the evening of a defeat, in

misery beneath the shelter of a bush, or amid the outrages of the

populace and the flames of funeral piles? Master, one day you will enter

Carthage among the colleges of the pontiffs, who will kiss your sandals;

and if the veil of Tanith weighs upon you still, you will reinstate it

in its temple. Follow me! come and take it.”

Matho was consumed by a terrible longing. He would have liked to possess

the veil while refraining from the sacrilege. He said to himself that

perhaps it would not be necessary to take it in order to monopolise its

virtue. He did not go to the bottom of his thought but stopped at the

boundary, where it terrified him.

“Come on!” he said; and they went off with rapid strides, side by

side, and without speaking.

The ground rose again, and the dwellings were near. They turned again

into the narrow streets amid the darkness. The strips of esparto-grass

with which the doors were closed, beat against the walls. Some camels

were ruminating in a square before heaps of cut grass. Then they passed

beneath a gallery covered with foliage. A pack of dogs were barking. But

suddenly the space grew wider and they recognised the western face of

the Acropolis. At the foot of Byrsa there stretched a long black mass:

it was the temple of Tanith, a whole made up of monuments and galleries,

courts and fore-courts, and bounded by a low wall of dry stones.

Spendius and Matho leaped over it.

This first barrier enclosed a wood of plane-trees as a precaution

against plague and infection in the air. Tents were scattered here

and there, in which, during the daytime, depilatory pastes,

perfumes, garments, moon-shaped cakes, and images of the goddess with

representations of the temple hollowed out in blocks of alabaster, were

on sale.

They had nothing to fear, for on nights when the planet did not appear,

all rites were suspended; nevertheless Matho slackened his speed, and

stopped before the three ebony steps leading to the second enclosure.

“Forward!” said Spendius.

Pomegranate, almond trees, cypresses and myrtles alternated in regular

succession; the path, which was paved with blue pebbles, creaked beneath

their footsteps, and full-blown roses formed a hanging bower over the

whole length of the avenue. They arrived before an oval hole protected

by a grating. Then Matho, who was frightened by the silence, said to

Spendius:

“It is here that they mix the fresh water and the bitter.”

“I have seen all that,” returned the former slave, “in Syria, in

the town of Maphug”; and they ascended into the third enclosure by a

staircase of six silver steps.

A huge cedar occupied the centre. Its lowest branches were hidden

beneath scraps of material and necklaces hung upon them by the faithful.

They walked a few steps further on, and the front of the temple was

displayed before them.

Two long porticoes, with their architraves resting on dumpy pillars,

flanked a quadrangular tower, the platform of which was adorned with

the crescent of a moon. On the angles of the porticoes and at the four

corners of the tower stood vases filled with kindled aromatics. The

capitals were laden with pomegranates and coloquintidas. Twining knots,

lozenges, and rows of pearls alternated on the walls, and a hedge of

silver filigree formed a wide semicircle in front of the brass staircase

which led down from the vestibule.

There was a cone of stone at the entrance between a stela of gold and

one of emerald, and Matho kissed his right hand as he passed beside it.

The first room was very lofty; its vaulted roof was pierced by

numberless apertures, and if the head were raised the stars might be

seen. All round the wall rush baskets were heaped up with the first

fruits of adolescence in the shape of beards and curls of hair; and in

the centre of the circular apartment the body of a woman issued from a

sheath which was covered with breasts. Fat, bearded, and with eyelids

downcast, she looked as though she were smiling, while her hands were

crossed upon the lower part of her big body, which was polished by the

kisses of the crowd.

Then they found themselves again in the open air in a transverse

corridor, wherein there was an altar of small dimensions leaning against

an ivory door. There was no further passage; the priests alone could

open it; for the temple was not a place of meeting for the multitude,

but the private abode of a divinity.

“The enterprise is impossible,” said Matho. “You had not thought

of this! Let us go back!” Spendius was examining the walls.

He wanted the veil, not because he had confidence in its virtue

(Spendius believed only in the Oracle), but because he was persuaded

that the Carthaginians would be greatly dismayed on seeing themselves

deprived of it. They walked all round behind in order to find some

outlet.

Aedicules of different shapes were visible beneath clusters of

turpentine trees. Here and there rose a stone phallus, and large stags

roamed peacefully about, spurning the fallen fir-cones with their cloven

hoofs.

But they retraced their steps between two long galleries which ran

parallel to each other. There were small open cells along their sides,

and tabourines and cymbals hung against their cedar columns from top to

bottom. Women were sleeping stretched on mats outside the cells. Their

bodies were greasy with unguents, and exhaled an odour of spices and

extinguished perfuming-pans; while they were so covered with tattooings,

necklaces, rings, vermilion, and antimony that, but for the motion of

their breasts, they might have been taken for idols as they lay thus on

the ground. There were lotus-trees encircling a fountain in which fish

like Salammbô’s were swimming; and then in the background, against

the wall of the temple, spread a vine, the branches of which were of

glass and the grape-bunches of emerald, the rays from the precious

stones making a play of light through the painted columns upon the

sleeping faces.

Matho felt suffocated in the warm atmosphere pressed down upon him by

the cedar partitions. All these symbols of fecundation, these perfumes,

radiations, and breathings overwhelmed him. Through all the mystic

dazzling he kept thinking of Salammbô. She became confused with the

goddess herself, and his love unfolded itself all the more, like the

great lotus-plants blooming upon the depths of the waters.

Spendius was calculating how much money he would have made in former

days by the sale of these women; and with a rapid glance he estimated

the weight of the golden necklaces as he passed by.

The temple was impenetrable on this side as on the other, and they

returned behind the first chamber. While Spendius was searching and

ferreting, Matho was prostrate before the door supplicating Tanith. He

besought her not to permit the sacrilege, and strove to soften her with

caressing words, such as are used to an angry person.

Spendius noticed a narrow aperture above the door.

“Rise!” he said to Matho, and he made him stand erect with his back

against the wall. Placing one foot in his hands, and then the other

upon his head, he reached up to the air-hole, made his way into it and

disappeared. Then Matho felt a knotted cord—that one which Spendius

had rolled around his body before entering the cisterns—fall upon his

shoulders, and bearing upon it with both hands he soon found himself by

the side of the other in a large hall filled with shadow.

Such an attempt was something extraordinary. The inadequacy of the

means for preventing it was a sufficient proof that it was considered

impossible. The sanctuaries were protected by terror more than by their

walls. Matho expected to die at every step.

However a light was flickering far back in the darkness, and they went

up to it. It was a lamp burning in a shell on the pedestal of a statue

which wore the cap of the Kabiri. Its long blue robe was strewn with

diamond discs, and its heels were fastened to the ground by chains which

sank beneath the pavement. Matho suppressed a cry. “Ah! there she is!

there she is!” he stammered out. Spendius took up the lamp in order to

light himself.

“What an impious man you are!” murmured Matho, following him

nevertheless.

The apartment which they entered had nothing in it but a black painting

representing another woman. Her legs reached to the top of the wall, and

her body filled the entire ceiling; a huge egg hung by a thread from her

navel, and she fell head downwards upon the other wall, reaching as far

as the level of the pavement, which was touched by her pointed fingers.

They drew a hanging aside, in order to go on further; but the wind blew

and the light went out.

Then they wandered about, lost in the complications of the architecture.

Suddenly they felt something strangely soft beneath their feet. Sparks

crackled and leaped; they were walking in fire. Spendius touched the

ground and perceived that it was carefully carpeted with lynx skins;

then it seemed to them that a big cord, wet, cold, and viscous, was

gliding between their legs. Through some fissures cut in the wall there

fell thin white rays, and they advanced by this uncertain light. At last

they distinguished a large black serpent. It darted quickly away and

disappeared.

“Let us fly!” exclaimed Matho. “It is she! I feel her; she is

coming.”

“No, no,” replied Spendius, “the temple is empty.”

Then a dazzling light made them lower their eyes. Next they perceived

all around them an infinite number of beasts, lean, panting, with

bristling claws, and mingled together one above another in a mysterious

and terrifying confusion. There were serpents with feet, and bulls

with wings, fishes with human heads were devouring fruit, flowers were

blooming in the jaws of crocodiles, and elephants with uplifted trunks

were sailing proudly through the azure like eagles. Their incomplete or

multiplied limbs were distended with terrible exertion. As they thrust

out their tongues they looked as though they would fain give forth

their souls; and every shape was to be found among them as if the

germ-receptacle had been suddenly hatched and had burst, emptying itself

upon the walls of the hall.

Round the latter were twelve globes of blue crystal, supported by

monsters resembling tigers. Their eyeballs were starting out of their

heads like those of snails, with their dumpy loins bent they were

turning round towards the background where the supreme Rabbet, the

Omnifecund, the last invented, shone splendid in a chariot of ivory.

She was covered with scales, feathers, flowers, and birds as high as the

waist. For earrings she had silver cymbals, which flapped against her

cheeks. Her large fixed eyes gazed upon you, and a luminous stone,

set in an obscene symbol on her brow, lighted the whole hall by its

reflection in red copper mirrors above the door.

Matho stood a step forward; but a flag stone yielded beneath his heels

and immediately the spheres began to revolve and the monsters to roar;

music rose melodious and pealing, like the harmony of the planets; the

tumultuous soul of Tanith was poured streaming forth. She was about to

arise, as lofty as the hall and with open arms. Suddenly the monsters

closed their jaws and the crystal globes revolved no more.

Then a mournful modulation lingered for a time through the air and at

last died away.

“And the veil?” said Spendius.

Nowhere could it be seen. Where was it to be found? How could it be

discovered? What if the priests had hidden it? Matho experienced anguish

of heart and felt as though he had been deceived in his belief.

“This way!” whispered Spendius. An inspiration guided him. He drew

Matho behind Tanith’s chariot, where a cleft a cubit wide ran down the

wall from top to bottom.

Then they penetrated into a small and completely circular room, so lofty

that it was like the interior of a pillar. In the centre there was a

big black stone, of semispherical shape like a tabourine; flames were

burning upon it; an ebony cone, bearing a head and two arms, rose

behind.

But beyond it seemed as though there were a cloud wherein were twinkling

stars; faces appeared in the depths of its folds—Eschmoun with the

Kabiri, some of the monsters that had already been seen, the sacred

beasts of the Babylonians, and others with which they were not

acquainted. It passed beneath the idol’s face like a mantle, and

spread fully out was drawn up on the wall to which it was fastened by

the corners, appearing at once bluish as the night, yellow as the dawn,

purple as the sun, multitudinous, diaphanous, sparkling light. It was

the mantle of the goddess, the holy zaïmph which might not be seen.

Both turned pale.

“Take it!” said Matho at last.

Spendius did not hesitate, and leaning upon the idol he unfastened the

veil, which sank to the ground. Matho laid his hand upon it; then he put

his head through the opening, then he wrapped it about his body, and he

spread out his arms the better to view it.

“Let us go!” said Spendius.

Matho stood panting with his eyes fixed upon the pavement. Suddenly he

exclaimed:

“But what if I went to her? I fear her beauty no longer! What could

she do to me? I am now more than a man. I could pass through flames or

walk upon the sea! I am transported! Salammbô! Salammbô! I am your

master!”

His voice was like thunder. He seemed to Spendius to have grown taller

and transformed.

A sound of footsteps drew near, a door opened, and a man appeared, a

priest with lofty cap and staring eyes. Before he could make a gesture

Spendius had rushed upon him, and clasping him in his arms had buried

both his daggers in his sides. His head rang upon the pavement.

Then they stood for a while, as motionless as the corpse, listening.

Nothing could be heard but the murmuring of the wind through the

half-opened door.

The latter led into a narrow passage. Spendius advanced along it, Matho

followed him, and they found themselves almost immediately in the third

enclosure, between the lateral porticoes, in which were the dwellings of

the priests.

Behind the cells there must be a shorter way out. They hastened along.

Spendius squatted down at the edge of the fountain and washed his

bloodstained hands. The women slept. The emerald vine shone. They

resumed their advance.

But something was running behind them under the trees; and Matho, who

bore the veil, several times felt that it was being pulled very gently

from below. It was a large cynocephalus, one of those which dwelt at

liberty within the enclosure of the goddess. It clung to the mantle as

though it had been conscious of the theft. They did not dare to strike

it, however, fearing that it might redouble its cries; suddenly its

anger subsided, and it trotted close beside them swinging its body with

its long hanging arms. Then at the barrier it leaped at a bound into a

palm tree.

When they had left the last enclosure they directed their steps towards

Hamilcar’s palace, Spendius understanding that it would be useless to

try to dissuade Matho.

They went by the street of the Tanners, the square of Muthumbal, the

green market and the crossways of Cynasyn. At the angle of a wall a man

drew back frightened by the sparkling thing which pierced the darkness.

“Hide the zaïmph!” said Spendius.

Other people passed them, but without perceiving them.

At last they recognised the houses of Megara.

The pharos, which was built behind them on the summit of the cliff,

lit up the heavens with a great red brightness, and the shadow of the

palace, with its rising terraces, projected a monstrous pyramid, as it

were, upon the gardens. They entered through the hedge of jujube-trees,

beating down the branches with blows of the dagger.

The traces of the feast of the Mercenaries were everywhere still

manifest. The parks were broken up, the trenches drained, the doors

of the ergastulum open. No one was to be seen about the kitchens or

cellars. They wondered at the silence, which was occasionally broken by

the hoarse breathing of the elephants moving in their shackles, and the

crepitation of the pharos, in which a pile of aloes was burning.

Matho, however, kept repeating:

“But where is she? I wish to see her! Lead me!”

“It is a piece of insanity!” Spendius kept saying. “She will call,

her slaves will run up, and in spite of your strength you will die!”

They reached thus the galley staircase. Matho raised his head, and

thought that he could perceive far above a vague brightness, radiant and

soft. Spendius sought to restrain him, but he dashed up the steps.

As he found himself again in places where he had already seen her, the

interval of the days that had passed was obliterated from his memory.

But now had she been singing among the tables; she had disappeared, and

he had since been continually ascending this staircase. The sky above

his head was covered with fires; the sea filled the horizon; at each

step he was surrounded by a still greater immensity, and he continued to

climb upward with that strange facility which we experience in dreams.

The rustling of the veil as it brushed against the stones recalled his

new power to him; but in the excess of his hope he could no longer tell

what he was to do; this uncertainty alarmed him.

From time to time he would press his face against the quadrangular

openings in the closed apartments, and he thought that in several of the

latter he could see persons asleep.

The last story, which was narrower, formed a sort of dado on the summit

of the terraces. Matho walked round it slowly.

A milky light filled the sheets of talc which closed the little

apertures in the wall, and in their symmetrical arrangement they looked

in the darkness like rows of delicate pearls. He recognised the red door

with the black cross. The throbbing of his heart increased. He would

fain have fled. He pushed the door and it opened.

A galley-shaped lamp hung burning in the back part of the room,

and three rays, emitted from its silver keel, trembled on the lofty

wainscots, which were painted red with black bands. The ceiling was an

assemblage of small beams, with amethysts and topazes amid their gilding

in the knots of the wood. On both the great sides of the apartment there

stretched a very low bed made with white leathern straps; while above,

semi-circles like shells, opened in the thickness of the wall, suffered

a garment to come out and hang down to the ground.

There was an oval basin with a step of onyx round it; delicate slippers

of serpent skin were standing on the edge, together with an alabaster

flagon. The trace of a wet footstep might be seen beyond. Exquisite

scents were evaporating.

Matho glided over the pavement, which was encrusted with gold,

mother-of-pearl, and glass; and, in spite of the polished smoothness

of the ground, it seemed to him that his feet sank as though he were

walking on sand.

Behind the silver lamp he had perceived a large square of azure held in

the air by four cords from above, and he advanced with loins bent and

mouth open.

Flamingoes’ wings, fitted on branches of black coral, lay about

among purple cushions, tortoiseshell strigils, cedar boxes, and ivory

spatulas. There were antelopes’ horns with rings and bracelets strung

upon them; and clay vases were cooling in the wind in the cleft of the

wall with a lattice-work of reeds. Several times he struck his foot,

for the ground had various levels of unequal height, which formed a

succession of apartments, as it were, in the room. In the background

there were silver balustrades surrounding a carpet strewn with painted

flowers. At last he came to the hanging bed beside an ebony stool

serving to get into it.

But the light ceased at the edge;—and the shadow, like a great

curtain, revealed only a corner of the red mattress with the extremity

of a little naked foot lying upon its ankle. Then Matho took up the lamp

very gently.

She was sleeping with her cheek in one hand and with the other arm

extended. Her ringlets were spread about her in such abundance that she

appeared to be lying on black feathers, and her ample white tunic wound

in soft draperies to her feet following the curves of her person. Her

eyes were just visible beneath her half-closed eyelids. The curtains,

which stretched perpendicularly, enveloped her in a bluish atmosphere,

and the motion of her breathing, communicating itself to the cords,

seemed to rock her in the air. A long mosquito was buzzing.

Matho stood motionless holding the silver lamp at arm’s length; but

on a sudden the mosquito-net caught fire and disappeared, and Salammbô

awoke.

The fire had gone out of itself. She did not speak. The lamp caused

great luminous moires to flicker on the wainscots.

“What is it?” she said.

He replied:

“’Tis the veil of the goddess!”

“The veil of the goddess!” cried Salammbô, and supporting herself

on both clenched hands she leaned shuddering out. He resumed:

“I have been in the depths of the sanctuary to seek it for you!

Look!” The zaïmph shone a mass of rays.

“Do you remember it?” said Matho. “You appeared at night in my

dreams, but I did not guess the mute command of your eyes!” She put

out one foot upon the ebony stool. “Had I understood I should have

hastened hither, I should have forsaken the army, I should not have left

Carthage. To obey you I would go down through the caverns of Hadrumetum

into the kingdom of the shades!—Forgive me! it was as though mountains

were weighing upon my days; and yet something drew me on! I tried to

come to you! Should I ever have dared this without the Gods!—Let us

go! You must follow me! or, if you do not wish to do so, I will remain.

What matters it to me!—Drown my soul in your breath! Let my lips be

crushed with kissing your hands!”

“Let me see it!” she said. “Nearer! nearer!”

Day was breaking, and the sheets of talc in the walls were filled with

a vinous colour. Salammbô leaned fainting against the cushions of the

bed.

“I love you!” cried Matho.

“Give it!” she stammered out, and they drew closer together.

She kept advancing, clothed in her white trailing simar, and with her

large eyes fastened on the veil. Matho gazed at her, dazzled by the

splendours of her head, and, holding out the zaïmph towards her, was

about to enfold her in an embrace. She was stretching out her

arms. Suddenly she stopped, and they stood looking at each other,

open-mouthed.

Then without understanding the meaning of his solicitation a horror

seized upon her. Her delicate eyebrows rose, her lips opened; she

trembled. At last she struck one of the brass pateras which hung at the

corners of the red mattress, crying:

“To the rescue! to the rescue! Back, sacrilegious man! infamous and

accursed! Help, Taanach, Kroum, Ewa, Micipsa, Schaoul!”

And the scared face of Spendius, appearing in the wall between the clay

flagons, cried out these words:

“Fly! they are hastening hither!”

A great tumult came upwards shaking the staircases, and a flood of

people, women, serving-men, and slaves, rushed into the room with

stakes, tomahawks, cutlasses, and daggers. They were nearly paralysed

with indignation on perceiving a man; the female servants uttered

funeral wailings, and the eunuchs grew pale beneath their black skins.

Matho was standing behind the balustrades. With the zaïmph which was

wrapped about him, he looked like a sidereal god surrounded by the

firmament. The slaves were going to fall upon him, but she stopped them:

“Touch it not! It is the mantle of the goddess!”

She had drawn back into a corner; but she took a step towards him, and

stretched forth her naked arm:

“A curse upon you, you who have plundered Tanith! Hatred, vengeance,

massacre, and grief! May Gurzil, god of battles, rend you! may Mastiman,

god of the dead, stifle you! and may the Other—he who may not be

named—burn you!”

Matho uttered a cry as though he had received a sword-thrust. She

repeated several times: “Begone! begone!”

The crowd of servants spread out, and Matho, with hanging head, passed

slowly through the midst of them; but at the door he stopped, for the

fringe of the zaïmph had caught on one of the golden stars with which

the flagstones were paved. He pulled it off abruptly with a movement of

his shoulder and went down the staircases.

Spendius, bounding from terrace to terrace, and leaping over the hedges

and trenches, had escaped from the gardens. He reached the foot of the

pharos. The wall was discontinued at this spot, so inaccessible was the

cliff. He advanced to the edge, lay down on his back, and let himself

slide, feet foremost, down the whole length of it to the bottom; then

by swimming he reached the Cape of the Tombs, made a wide circuit of the

salt lagoon, and re-entered the camp of the Barbarians in the evening.

The sun had risen; and, like a retreating lion, Matho went down the

paths, casting terrible glances about him.

A vague clamour reached his ears. It had started from the palace, and it

was beginning afresh in the distance, towards the Acropolis. Some said

that the treasure of the Republic had been seized in the temple of

Moloch; others spoke of the assassination of a priest. It was thought,

moreover, that the Barbarians had entered the city.

Matho, who did not know how to get out of the enclosures, walked

straight before him. He was seen, and an outcry was raised. Every one

understood; and there was consternation, then immense wrath.

From the bottom of the Mappalian quarter, from the heights of the

Acropolis, from the catacombs, from the borders of the lake, the

multitude came in haste. The patricians left their palaces, and the

traders left their shops; the women forsook their children; swords,

hatchets, and sticks were seized; but the obstacle which had stayed

Salammbô stayed them. How could the veil be taken back? The mere sight

of it was a crime; it was of the nature of the gods, and contact with it

was death.

The despairing priests wrung their hands on the peristyles of the

temples. The guards of the Legion galloped about at random; the people

climbed upon the houses, the terraces, the shoulders of the colossuses,

and the masts of the ships. He went on, nevertheless, and the rage, and

the terror also, increased at each of his steps; the streets cleared at

his approach, and the torrent of flying men streamed on both sides up

to the tops of the walls. Everywhere he could perceive only eyes opened

widely as if to devour him, chattering teeth and outstretched fists, and

Salammbô’s imprecations resounded many times renewed.

Suddenly a long arrow whizzed past, then another, and stones began to

buzz about him; but the missiles, being badly aimed (for there was the

dread of hitting the zaïmph), passed over his head. Moreover, he made a

shield of the veil, holding it to the right, to the left, before him and

behind him; and they could devise no expedient. He quickened his steps

more and more, advancing through the open streets. They were barred

with cords, chariots, and snares; and all his windings brought him back

again. At last he entered the square of Khamon where the Balearians had

perished, and stopped, growing pale as one about to die. This time he

was surely lost, and the multitude clapped their hands.

He ran up to the great gate, which was closed. It was very high, made

throughout of heart of oak, with iron nails and sheathed with brass.

Matho flung himself against it. The people stamped their feet with joy

when they saw the impotence of his fury; then he took his sandal, spit

upon it, and beat the immovable panels with it. The whole city howled.

The veil was forgotten now, and they were about to crush him. Matho

gazed with wide vacant eyes upon the crowd. His temples were throbbing

with violence enough to stun him, and he felt a numbness as of

intoxication creeping over him. Suddenly he caught sight of the long

chain used in working the swinging of the gate. With a bound he grasped

it, stiffening his arms, and making a buttress of his feet, and at last

the huge leaves partly opened.

Then when he was outside he took the great zaïmph from his neck, and

raised it as high as possible above his head. The material, upborne by

the sea breeze, shone in the sunlight with its colours, its gems, and

the figures of its gods. Matho bore it thus across the whole plain as

far as the soldiers’ tents, and the people on the walls watched the

fortune of Carthage depart.

CHAPTER VI HANNO

“I ought to have carried her off!” Matho said in the evening to

Spendius. “I should have seized her, and torn her from her house! No

one would have dared to touch me!”

Spendius was not listening to him. Stretched on his back he was taking

delicious rest beside a large jar filled with honey-coloured water, into

which he would dip his head from time to time in order to drink more

copiously.

Matho resumed:

“What is to be done? How can we re-enter Carthage?”

“I do not know,” said Spendius.

Such impassibility exasperated Matho and he exclaimed:

“Why! the fault is yours! You carry me away, and then you forsake me,

coward that you are! Why, pray, should I obey you? Do you think that you

are my master? Ah! you prostituter, you slave, you son of a slave!” He

ground his teeth and raised his broad hand above Spendius.

The Greek did not reply. An earthen lamp was burning gently against the

tent-pole, where the zaïmph shone amid the hanging panoply. Suddenly

Matho put on his cothurni, buckled on his brazen jacket of mail, and

took his helmet.

“Where are you going?” asked Spendius.

“I am returning! Let me alone! I will bring her back! And if they

show themselves I will crush them like vipers! I will put her to death,

Spendius! Yes,” he repeated, “I will kill her! You shall see, I will

kill her!”

But Spendius, who was listening eagerly, snatched up the zaïmph

abruptly and threw it into a corner, heaping up fleeces above it.

A murmuring of voices was heard, torches gleamed, and Narr’ Havas

entered, followed by about twenty men.

They wore white woollen cloaks, long daggers, copper necklaces, wooden

earrings, and boots of hyena skin; and standing on the threshold they

leaned upon their lances like herdsmen resting themselves. Narr’

Havas was the handsomest of all; his slender arms were bound with straps

ornamented with pearls. The golden circlet which fastened his ample

garment about his head held an ostrich feather which hung down behind

his shoulder; his teeth were displayed in a continual smile; his eyes

seemed sharpened like arrows, and there was something observant and airy

about his whole demeanour.

He declared that he had come to join the Mercenaries, for the Republic

had long been threatening his kingdom. Accordingly he was interested in

assisting the Barbarians, and he might also be of service to them.

“I will provide you with elephants (my forests are full of them),

wine, oil, barley, dates, pitch and sulphur for sieges, twenty thousand

foot-soldiers and ten thousand horses. If I address myself to you,

Matho, it is because the possession of the zaïmph has made you chief

man in the army. Moreover,” he added, “we are old friends.”

Matho, however, was looking at Spendius, who, seated on the sheep-skins,

was listening, and giving little nods of assent the while. Narr’ Havas

continued speaking. He called the gods to witness he cursed Carthage. In

his imprecations he broke a javelin. All his men uttered simultaneously

a loud howl, and Matho, carried away by so much passion, exclaimed that

he accepted the alliance.

A white bull and a black sheep, the symbols of day and night, were then

brought, and their throats were cut on the edge of a ditch. When the

latter was full of blood they dipped their arms into it. Then Narr’

Havas spread out his hand upon Matho’s breast, and Matho did the

same to Narr’ Havas. They repeated the stain upon the canvas of their

tents. Afterwards they passed the night in eating, and the remaining

portions of the meat were burnt together with the skin, bones, horns,

and hoofs.

Matho had been greeted with great shouting when he had come back bearing

the veil of the goddess; even those who were not of the Chanaanitish

religion were made by their vague enthusiasm to feel the arrival of

a genius. As to seizing the zaïmph, no one thought of it, for the

mysterious manner in which he had acquired it was sufficient in the

minds of the Barbarians to justify its possession; such were the

thoughts of the soldiers of the African race. The others, whose hatred

was not of such long standing, did not know how to make up their minds.

If they had had ships they would immediately have departed.

Spendius, Narr’ Havas, and Matho despatched men to all the tribes on

Punic soil.

Carthage was sapping the strength of these nations. She wrung exorbitant

taxes from them, and arrears or even murmurings were punished with

fetters, the axe, or the cross. It was necessary to cultivate whatever

suited the Republic, and to furnish what she demanded; no one had the

right of possessing a weapon; when villages rebelled the inhabitants

were sold; governors were esteemed like wine-presses, according to the

quantity which they succeeded in extracting. Then beyond the regions

immediately subject to Carthage extended the allies roamed the Nomads,

who might be let loose upon them. By this system the crops were always

abundant, the studs skilfully managed, and the plantations superb.

The elder Cato, a master in the matters of tillage and slaves, was

amazed at it ninety-two years later, and the death-cry which he repeated

continually at Rome was but the exclamation of jealous greed.

During the last war the exactions had been increased, so that nearly

all the towns of Libya had surrendered to Regulus. To punish them, a

thousand talents, twenty thousand oxen, three hundred bags of gold dust,

and considerable advances of grain had been exacted from them, and the

chiefs of the tribes had been crucified or thrown to the lions.

Tunis especially execrated Carthage! Older than the metropolis, it could

not forgive her her greatness, and it fronted her walls crouching in

the mire on the water’s edge like a venomous beast watching her.

Transportation, massacres, and epidemics did not weaken it. It

had assisted Archagathas, the son of Agathocles, and the Eaters of

Uncleanness found arms there at once.

The couriers had not yet set out when universal rejoicing broke out

in the provinces. Without waiting for anything they strangled the

comptrollers of the houses and the functionaries of the Republic in

the baths; they took the old weapons that had been concealed out of the

caves; they forged swords with the iron of the ploughs; the children

sharpened javelins at the doors, and the women gave their necklaces,

rings, earrings, and everything that could be employed for the

destruction of Carthage. Piles of lances were heaped up in the country

towns like sheaves of maize. Cattle and money were sent off. Matho

speedily paid the Mercenaries their arrears, and owing to this, which

was Spendius’s idea, he was appointed commander-in-chief—the

schalishim of the Barbarians.

Reinforcements of men poured in at the same time. The aborigines

appeared first, and were followed by the slaves from the country;

caravans of Negroes were seized and armed, and merchants on their way

to Carthage, despairing of any more certain profit, mingled with the

Barbarians. Numerous bands were continually arriving. From the heights

of the Acropolis the growing army might be seen.

But the guards of the Legion were posted as sentries on the platform

of the aqueduct, and near them rose at intervals brazen vats, in which

floods of asphalt were boiling. Below in the plain the great crowd

stirred tumultuously. They were in a state of uncertainty, feeling the

embarrassment with which Barbarians are always inspired when they meet

with walls.

Utica and Hippo-Zarytus refused their alliance. Phonician colonies like

Carthage, they were self-governing, and always had clauses inserted

in the treaties concluded by the Republic to distinguish them from the

latter. Nevertheless they respected this strong sister of theirs who

protected them, and they did not think that she could be vanquished by

a mass of Barbarians; these would on the contrary be themselves

exterminated. They desired to remain neutral and to live at peace.

But their position rendered them indispensable. Utica, at the foot

of the gulf, was convenient for bringing assistance to Carthage from

without. If Utica alone were taken, Hippo-Zarytus, six hours further

distant along the coast, would take its place, and the metropolis, being

revictualled in this way, would be impregnable.

Spendius wished the siege to be undertaken immediately. Narr’ Havas

was opposed to this: an advance should first be made upon the frontier.

This was the opinion of the veterans, and of Matho himself, and it

was decided that Spendius should go to attack Utica, and Matho

Hippo-Zarytus, while in the third place the main body should rest on

Tunis and occupy the plain of Carthage, Autaritus being in command.

As to Narr’ Havas, he was to return to his own kingdom to procure

elephants and to scour the roads with his cavalry.

The women cried out loudly against this decision; they coveted the

jewels of the Punic ladies. The Libyans also protested. They had been

summoned against Carthage, and now they were going away from it! The

soldiers departed almost alone. Matho commanded his own companions,

together with the Iberians, Lusitanians, and the men of the West, and of

the islands; all those who spoke Greek had asked for Spendius on account

of his cleverness.

Great was the stupefaction when the army was seen suddenly in motion;

it stretched along beneath the mountain of Ariana on the road to Utica

beside the sea. A fragment remained before Tunis, the rest disappeared

to re-appear on the other shore of the gulf on the outskirts of the

woods in which they were lost.

They were perhaps eighty thousand men. The two Tyrian cities would offer

no resistance, and they would return against Carthage. Already there was

a considerable army attacking it from the base of the isthmus, and it

would soon perish from famine, for it was impossible to live without the

aid of the provinces, the citizens not paying contributions as they did

at Rome. Carthage was wanting in political genius. Her eternal anxiety

for gain prevented her from having the prudence which results from

loftier ambitions. A galley anchored on the Libyan sands, it was with

toil that she maintained her position. The nations roared like billows

around her, and the slightest storm shook this formidable machine.

The treasury was exhausted by the Roman war and by all that had been

squandered and lost in the bargaining with the Barbarians. Nevertheless

soldiers must be had, and not a government would trust the Republic!

Ptolemæus had lately refused it two thousand talents. Moreover the rape

of the veil disheartened them. Spendius had clearly foreseen this.

But the nation, feeling that it was hated, clasped its money and

its gods to its heart, and its patriotism was sustained by the very

constitution of its government.

First, the power rested with all, without any one being strong enough

to engross it. Private debts were considered as public debts, men of

Chanaanitish race had a monopoly of commerce, and by multiplying the

profits of piracy with those of usury, by hard dealings in lands and

slaves and with the poor, fortunes were sometimes made. These alone

opened up all the magistracies, and although authority and money were

perpetuated in the same families, people tolerated the oligarchy because

they hoped ultimately to share in it.

The societies of merchants, in which the laws were elaborated, chose the

inspectors of the exchequer, who on leaving office nominated the hundred

members of the Council of the Ancients, themselves dependent on the

Grand Assembly, or general gathering of all the rich. As to the two

Suffets, the relics of the monarchy and the less than consuls, they were

taken from distinct families on the same day. All kinds of enmities were

contrived between them, so that they might mutually weaken each other.

They could not deliberate concerning war, and when they were vanquished

the Great Council crucified them.

The power of Carthage emanated, therefore, from the Syssitia, that is

to say, from a large court in the centre of Malqua, at the place, it

was said, where the first bark of Phonician sailors had touched, the

sea having retired a long way since then. It was a collection of little

rooms of archaic architecture, built of palm trunks with corners of

stone, and separated from one another so as to accommodate the various

societies separately. The rich crowded there all day to discuss their

own concerns and those of the government, from the procuring of pepper

to the extermination of Rome. Thrice in a moon they would have their

beds brought up to the lofty terrace running along the wall of the

court, and they might be seen from below at table in the air, without

cothurni or cloaks, with their diamond-covered fingers wandering

over the dishes, and their large earrings hanging down among the

flagons,—all fat and lusty, half-naked, smiling and eating beneath the

blue sky, like great sharks sporting in the sea.

But just now they were unable to dissemble their anxiety; they were too

pale for that. The crowd which waited for them at the gates escorted

them to their palaces in order to obtain some news from them. As in

times of pestilence, all the houses were shut; the streets would fill

and suddenly clear again; people ascended the Acropolis or ran to the

harbour, and the Great Council deliberated every night. At last the

people were convened in the square of Khamon, and it was decided to

leave the management of things to Hanno, the conqueror of Hecatompylos.

He was a true Carthaginian, devout, crafty, and pitiless towards the

people of Africa. His revenues equalled those of the Barcas. No one had

such experience in administrative affairs.

He decreed the enrolment of all healthy citizens, he placed catapults on

the towers, he exacted exorbitant supplies of arms, he even ordered the

construction of fourteen galleys which were not required, and he desired

everything to be registered and carefully set down in writing. He had

himself conveyed to the arsenal, the pharos, and the treasuries of the

temples; his great litter was continually to be seen swinging from step

to step as it ascended the staircases of the Acropolis. And then in

his palace at night, being unable to sleep, he would yell out warlike

manouvres in terrible tones so as to prepare himself for the fray.

In their extremity of terror all became brave. The rich ranged

themselves in line along the Mappalian district at cockcrow, and tucking

up their robes practised themselves in handling the pike. But for

want of an instructor they had disputes about it. They would sit down

breathless upon the tombs and then begin again. Several even dieted

themselves. Some imagined that it was necessary to eat a great deal in

order to acquire strength, while others who were inconvenienced by their

corpulence weakened themselves with fasts in order to become thin.

Utica had already called several times upon Carthage for assistance; but

Hanno would not set out until the engines of war had been supplied with

the last screws. He lost three moons more in equipping the one hundred

and twelve elephants that were lodged in the ramparts. They were the

conquerors of Regulus; the people loved them; it was impossible to treat

such old friends too well. Hanno had the brass plates which adorned

their breasts recast, their tusks gilt, their towers enlarged, and

caparisons, edged with very heavy fringes, cut out of the handsomest

purple. Finally, as their drivers were called Indians (after the first

ones, no doubt, who came from the Indies) he ordered them all to be

costumed after the Indian fashion; that is to say, with white pads round

their temples, and small drawers of byssus, which with their transverse

folds looked like two valves of a shell applied to the hips.

The army under Autaritus still remained before Tunis. It was hidden

behind a wall made with mud from the lake, and protected on the top by

thorny brushwood. Some Negroes had planted tall sticks here and there

bearing frightful faces,—human masks made with birds’ feathers, and

jackals’ or serpents’ heads,—which gaped towards the enemy for

the purpose of terrifying him; and the Barbarians, reckoning themselves

invincible through these means, danced, wrestled, and juggled, convinced

that Carthage would perish before long. Any one but Hanno would easily

have crushed such a multitude, hampered as it was with herds and women.

Moreover, they knew nothing of drill, and Autaritus was so disheartened

that he had ceased to require it.

They stepped aside when he passed by rolling his big blue eyes. Then

on reaching the edge of the lake he would draw back his sealskin cloak,

unfasten the cord which tied up his long red hair, and soak the latter

in the water. He regretted that he had not deserted to the Romans along

with the two thousand Gauls of the temple of Eryx.

Often the sun would suddenly lose his rays in the middle of the day.

Then the gulf and the open sea would seem as motionless as molten lead.

A cloud of brown dust stretching perpendicularly would speed whirling

along; the palm trees would bend and the sky disappear, while stones

would be heard rebounding on the animals’ cruppers; and the Gaul, his

lips glued against the holes in his tent, would gasp with exhaustion and

melancholy. His thoughts would be of the scent of the pastures on autumn

mornings, of snowflakes, or of the bellowing of the urus lost in the

fog, and closing his eyelids he would in imagination behold the fires in

long, straw-roofed cottages flickering on the marshes in the depths of

the woods.

Others regretted their native lands as well as he, even though they

might not be so far away. Indeed the Carthaginian captives could

distinguish the velaria spread over the courtyards of their houses,

beyond the gulf on the slopes of Byrsa. But sentries marched round them

continually. They were all fastened to a common chain. Each one wore an

iron carcanet, and the crowd was never weary of coming to gaze at them.

The women would show their little children the handsome robes hanging in

tatters on their wasted limbs.

Whenever Autaritus looked at Gisco he was seized with rage at the

recollection of the insult that he had received, and he would have

killed him but for the oath which he had taken to Narr’ Havas. Then

he would go back into his tent and drink a mixture of barley and cumin

until he swooned away from intoxication,—to awake afterwards in broad

daylight consumed with horrible thirst.

Matho, meanwhile, was besieging Hippo-Zarytus. But the town was

protected by a lake, communicating with the sea. It had three lines of

circumvallation, and upon the heights which surrounded it there

extended a wall fortified with towers. He had never commanded in such

an enterprise before. Moreover, he was beset with thoughts of Salammbô,

and he raved in the delight of her beauty as in the sweetness of a

vengeance that transported him with pride. He felt an acrid, frenzied,

permanent want to see her again. He even thought of presenting himself

as the bearer of a flag of truce, in the hope that once within Carthage

he might make his way to her. Often he would cause the assault to be

sounded and waiting for nothing rush upon the mole which it was sought

to construct in the sea. He would snatch up the stones with his hands,

overturn, strike, and deal sword-thrusts everywhere. The Barbarians

would dash on pell-mell; the ladders would break with a loud crash, and

masses of men would tumble into the water, causing it to fly up in

red waves against the walls. Finally the tumult would subside, and the

soldiers would retire to make a fresh beginning.

Matho would go and seat himself outside the tents, wipe his

blood-splashed face with his arm, and gaze at the horizon in the

direction of Carthage.

In front of him, among the olives, palms, myrtles and planes, stretched

two broad ponds which met another lake, the outlines of which could not

be seen. Behind one mountain other mountains reared themselves, and

in the middle of the immense lake rose an island perfectly black and

pyramidal in form. On the left, at the extremity of the gulf, were

sand-heaps like arrested waves, large and pale, while the sea, flat as a

pavement of lapis-lazuli, ascended by insensible degrees to the edge

of the sky. The verdure of the country was lost in places beneath long

sheets of yellow; carobs were shining like knobs of coral; vine branches

drooped from the tops of the sycamores; the murmuring of the water could

be heard; crested larks were hopping about, and the sun’s latest fires

gilded the carapaces of the tortoises as they came forth from the reeds

to inhale the breeze.

Matho would heave deep sighs. He would lie flat on his face, with his

nails buried in the soil, and weep; he felt wretched, paltry, forsaken.

Never would he possess her, and he was unable even to take a town.

At night when alone in his tent he would gaze upon the zaïmph. Of what

use to him was this thing which belonged to the gods?—and doubt crept

into the Barbarian’s thoughts. Then, on the contrary, it would seem

to him that the vesture of the goddess was depending from Salammbô, and

that a portion of her soul hovered in it, subtler than a breath; and

he would feel it, breathe it in, bury his face in it, and kiss it with

sobs. He would cover his shoulders with it in order to delude himself

that he was beside her.

Sometimes he would suddenly steal away, stride in the starlight over

the sleeping soldiers as they lay wrapped in their cloaks, spring upon

a horse on reaching the camp gates, and two hours later be at Utica in

Spendius’s tent.

At first he would speak of the siege, but his coming was only to ease

his sorrow by talking about Salammbô. Spendius exhorted him to be

prudent.

“Drive away these trifles from your soul, which is degraded by them!

Formerly you were used to obey; now you command an army, and if Carthage

is not conquered we shall at least be granted provinces. We shall become

kings!”

But how was it that the possession of the zaïmph did not give them the

victory? According to Spendius they must wait.

Matho fancied that the veil affected people of Chanaanitish race

exclusively, and, in his Barbarian-like subtlety, he said to himself:

“The zaïmph will accordingly do nothing for me, but since they have

lost it, it will do nothing for them.”

Afterwards a scruple troubled him. He was afraid of offending Moloch

by worshipping Aptouknos, the god of the Libyans, and he timidly asked

Spendius to which of the gods it would be advisable to sacrifice a man.

“Keep on sacrificing!” laughed Spendius.

Matho, who could not understand such indifference, suspected the Greek

of having a genius of whom he did not speak.

All modes of worship, as well as all races, were to be met with in these

armies of Barbarians, and consideration was had to the gods of others,

for they too, inspired fear. Many mingled foreign practices with their

native religion. It was to no purpose that they did not adore the stars;

if a constellation were fatal or helpful, sacrifices were offered to

it; an unknown amulet found by chance at a moment of peril became

a divinity; or it might be a name and nothing more, which would be

repeated without any attempt to understand its meaning. But after

pillaging temples, and seeing numbers of nations and slaughters, many

ultimately ceased to believe in anything but destiny and death;—and

every evening these would fall asleep with the placidity of wild beasts.

Spendius had spit upon the images of Jupiter Olympius; nevertheless he

dreaded to speak aloud in the dark, nor did he fail every day to put on

his right boot first.

He reared a long quadrangular terrace in front of Utica, but in

proportion as it ascended the rampart was also heightened, and what was

thrown down by the one side was almost immediately raised again by the

other. Spendius took care of his men; he dreamed of plans and strove to

recall the stratagems which he had heard described in his travels. But

why did Narr’ Havas not return? There was nothing but anxiety.

Hanno had at last concluded his preparations. One night when there was

no moon he transported his elephants and soldiers on rafts across

the Gulf of Carthage. Then they wheeled round the mountain of the Hot

Springs so as to avoid Autaritus, and continued their march so slowly

that instead of surprising the Barbarians in the morning, as the Suffet

had calculated, they did not reach them until it was broad daylight on

the third day.

Utica had on the east a plain which extended to the large lagoon of

Carthage; behind it a valley ran at right angles between two low and

abruptly terminated mountains; the Barbarians were encamped further

to the left in such a way as to blockade the harbour; and they were

sleeping in their tents (for on that day both sides were too weary

to fight and were resting) when the Carthaginian army appeared at the

turning of the hills.

Some camp followers furnished with slings were stationed at intervals

on the wings. The first line was formed of the guards of the Legion in

golden scale-armour, mounted on their big horses, which were without

mane, hair, or ears, and had silver horns in the middle of their

foreheads to make them look like rhinoceroses. Between their squadrons

were youths wearing small helmets and swinging an ashen javelin in each

hand. The long files of the heavy infantry marched behind. All these

traders had piled as many weapons upon their bodies as possible. Some

might be seen carrying an axe, a lance, a club, and two swords all at

once; others bristled with darts like porcupines, and their arms stood

out from their cuirasses in sheets of horn or iron plates. At last the

scaffoldings of the lofty engines appeared: carrobalistas, onagers,

catapults and scorpions, rocking on chariots drawn by mules and

quadrigas of oxen; and in proportion as the army drew out, the captains

ran panting right and left to deliver commands, close up the files, and

preserve the intervals. Such of the Ancients as held commands had come

in purple cassocks, the magnificent fringes of which tangled in the

white straps of their cothurni. Their faces, which were smeared all over

with vermilion, shone beneath enormous helmets surmounted with images

of the gods; and, as they had shields with ivory borders covered with

precious stones, they might have been taken for suns passing over walls

of brass.

But the Carthaginians manouvred so clumsily that the soldiers in

derision urged them to sit down. They called out that they were just

going to empty their big stomachs, to dust the gilding of their skin,

and to give them iron to drink.

A strip of green cloth appeared at the top of the pole planted before

Spendius’s tent: it was the signal. The Carthaginian army replied to

it with a great noise of trumpets, cymbals, flutes of asses’ bones,

and tympanums. The Barbarians had already leaped outside the palisades,

and were facing their enemies within a javelin’s throw of them.

A Balearic slinger took a step forward, put one of his clay bullets into

his thong, and swung round his arm. An ivory shield was shivered, and

the two armies mingled together.

The Greeks made the horses rear and fall back upon their masters by

pricking their nostrils with the points of their lances. The slaves

who were to hurl stones had picked such as were too big, and they

accordingly fell close to them. The Punic foot-soldiers exposed the

right side in cutting with their long swords. The Barbarians broke their

lines; they slaughtered them freely; they stumbled over the dying and

dead, quite blinded by the blood that spurted into their faces. The

confused heap of pikes, helmets, cuirasses and swords turned round

about, widening out and closing in with elastic contractions. The gaps

increased more and more in the Carthaginian cohorts, the engines could

not get out of the sand; and finally the Suffet’s litter (his grand

litter with crystal pendants), which from the beginning might have

been seen tossing among the soldiers like a bark on the waves, suddenly

foundered. He was no doubt dead. The Barbarians found themselves alone.

The dust around them fell and they were beginning to sing, when Hanno

himself appeared on the top of an elephant. He sat bare-headed beneath a

parasol of byssus which was carried by a Negro behind him. His necklace

of blue plates flapped against the flowers on his black tunic; his huge

arms were compressed within circles of diamonds, and with open mouth he

brandished a pike of inordinate size, which spread out at the end like

a lotus, and flashed more than a mirror. Immediately the earth

shook,—and the Barbarians saw all the elephants of Carthage, with

their gilt tusks and blue-painted ears, hastening up in single line,

clothed with bronze and shaking the leathern towers which were placed

above their scarlet caparisons, in each of which were three archers

bending large bows.

The soldiers were barely in possession of their arms; they had taken

up their positions at random. They were frozen with terror; they stood

undecided.

Javelins, arrows, phalaricas, and masses of lead were already being

showered down upon them from the towers. Some clung to the fringes of

the caparisons in order to climb up, but their hands were struck off

with cutlasses and they fell backwards upon the swords’ points. The

pikes were too weak and broke, and the elephants passed through the

phalanxes like wild boars through tufts of grass; they plucked up the

stakes of the camp with their trunks, and traversed it from one end to

the other, overthrowing the tents with their breasts. All the Barbarians

had fled. They were hiding themselves in the hills bordering the valley

by which the Carthaginians had come.

The victorious Hanno presented himself before the gates of Utica. He had

a trumpet sounded. The three Judges of the town appeared in the opening

of the battlements on the summit of a tower.

But the people of Utica would not receive such well-armed guests. Hanno

was furious. At last they consented to admit him with a feeble escort.

The streets were too narrow for the elephants. They had to be left

outside.

As soon as the Suffet was in the town the principal men came to greet

him. He had himself taken to the vapour baths, and called for his cooks.

Three hours afterwards he was still immersed in the oil of cinnamomum

with which the basin had been filled; and while he bathed he ate

flamingoes’ tongues with honied poppy-seeds on a spread ox-hide.

Beside him was his Greek physician, motionless, in a long yellow robe,

directing the re-heating of the bath from time to time, and two young

boys leaned over the steps of the basin and rubbed his legs. But

attention to his body did not check his love for the commonwealth, for

he was dictating a letter to be sent to the Great Council, and as

some prisoners had just been taken he was asking himself what terrible

punishment could be devised.

“Stop!” said he to a slave who stood writing in the hollow of his

hand. “Let some of them be brought to me! I wish to see them!”

And from the bottom of the hall, full of a whitish vapour on which the

torches cast red spots, three Barbarians were thrust forward: a Samnite,

a Spartan, and a Cappadocian.

“Proceed!” said Hanno.

“Rejoice, light of the Baals! your Suffet has exterminated the

ravenous hounds! Blessings on the Republic! Give orders for prayers!”

He perceived the captives and burst out laughing: “Ah! ha! my fine

fellows of Sicca! You are not shouting so loudly to-day! It is I! Do

you recognise me? And where are your swords? What really terrible

fellows!” and he pretended to be desirous to hide himself as if

he were afraid of them. “You demanded horses, women, estates,

magistracies, no doubt, and priesthoods! Why not? Well, I will provide

you with the estates, and such as you will never come out of! You shall

be married to gibbets that are perfectly new! Your pay? it shall be

melted in your mouths in leaden ingots! and I will put you into good and

very exalted positions among the clouds, so as to bring you close to the

eagles!”

The three long-haired and ragged Barbarians looked at him without

understanding what he said. Wounded in the knees, they had been seized

by having ropes thrown over them, and the ends of the great chains on

their hands trailed upon the pavement. Hanno was indignant at their

impassibility.

“On your knees! on your knees! jackals! dust! vermin! excrements! And

they make no reply! Enough! be silent! Let them be flayed alive! No!

presently!”

He was breathing like a hippopotamus and rolling his eyes. The perfumed

oil overflowed beneath the mass of his body, and clinging to the scales

on his skin, made it look pink in the light of the torches.

He resumed:

“For four days we suffered greatly from the sun. Some mules were lost

in crossing the Macaras. In spite of their position, the extraordinary

courage—Ah! Demonades! how I suffer! Have the bricks reheated, and let

them be red-hot!”

A noise of rakes and furnaces was heard. The incense smoked more

strongly in the large perfuming pans, and the shampooers, who were quite

naked and were sweating like sponges, crushed a paste composed of wheat,

sulphur, black wine, bitch’s milk, myrrh, galbanum and storax upon his

joints. He was consumed with incessant thirst, but the yellow-robed man

did not yield to this inclination, and held out to him a golden cup in

which viper broth was smoking.

“Drink!” said he, “that strength of sun-born serpents may

penetrate into the marrow of your bones, and take courage, O reflection

of the gods! You know, moreover, that a priest of Eschmoun watches those

cruel stars round the Dog from which your malady is derived. They are

growing pale like the spots on your skin, and you are not to die from

them.”

“Oh! yes, that is so, is it not?” repeated the Suffet, “I am not

to die from them!” And his violaceous lips gave forth a breath more

nauseous than the exhalation from a corpse. Two coals seemed to burn in

the place of his eyes, which had lost their eyebrows; a mass of wrinkled

skin hung over his forehead; both his ears stood out from his head

and were beginning to increase in size; and the deep lines forming

semicircles round his nostrils gave him a strange and terrifying

appearance, the look of a wild beast. His unnatural voice was like a

roar; he said:

“Perhaps you are right, Demonades. In fact there are many ulcers here

which have closed. I feel robust. Here! look how I am eating!”

And less from greediness than from ostentation, and the desire to prove

to himself that he was in good health, he cut into the forcemeats

of cheese and marjoram, the boned fish, gourds, oysters with eggs,

horse-radishes, truffles, and brochettes of small birds. As he looked

at the prisoners he revelled in the imagination of their tortures.

Nevertheless he remembered Sicca, and the rage caused by all his woes

found vent in the abuse of these three men.

“Ah! traitors! ah! wretches! infamous, accursed creatures! And you

outraged me!—me! the Suffet! Their services, the price of their

blood, say they! Ah! yes! their blood! their blood!” Then speaking

to himself:—“All shall perish! not one shall be sold! It would be

better to bring them to Carthage! I should be seen—but doubtless, I

have not brought chains enough? Write: Send me—How many of them are

there? go and ask Muthumbal! Go! no pity! and let all their hands be cut

off and brought to me in baskets!”

But strange cries at once hoarse and shrill penetrated into the hall

above Hanno’s voice and the rattling of the dishes that were being

placed around him. They increased, and suddenly the furious trumpeting

of the elephants burst forth as if the battle were beginning again. A

great tumult was going on around the town.

The Carthaginians had not attempted to pursue the Barbarians. They had

taken up their quarters at the foot of the walls with their baggage,

mules, serving men, and all their train of satraps; and they made

merry in their beautiful pearl-bordered tents, while the camp of the

Mercenaries was now nothing but a heap of ruins in the plain. Spendius

had recovered his courage. He dispatched Zarxas to Matho, scoured the

woods, rallied his men (the losses had been inconsiderable),—and they

were re-forming their lines enraged at having been conquered without a

fight, when they discovered a vat of petroleum which had no doubt been

abandoned by the Carthaginians. Then Spendius had some pigs carried off

from the farms, smeared them with bitumen, set them on fire, and drove

them towards Utica.

The elephants were terrified by the flames and fled. The ground sloped

upwards, javelins were thrown at them, and they turned back;—and

with great blows of ivory and trampling feet they ripped up the

Carthaginians, stifled them, flattened them. The Barbarians descended

the hill behind them; the Punic camp, which was without entrenchments

was sacked at the first rush, and the Carthaginians were crushed against

the gates, which were not opened through fear of the Mercenaries.

Day broke, and Matho’s foot-soldiers were seen coming up from the

west. At the same time horsemen appeared; they were Narr’ Havas with

his Numidians. Leaping ravines and bushes they ran down the fugitives

like greyhounds pursuing hares. This change of fortune interrupted the

Suffet. He called out to be assisted to leave the vapour bath.

The three captives were still before him. Then a Negro (the same who had

carried his parasol in the battle) leaned over to his ear.

“Well?” replied the Suffet slowly. “Ah! kill them!” he added in

an abrupt tone.

The Ethiopian drew a long dagger from his girdle and the three heads

fell. One of them rebounded among the remains of the feast, and leaped

into the basin, where it floated for some time with open mouth and

staring eyes. The morning light entered through the chinks in the wall;

the three bodies streamed with great bubbles like three fountains, and

a sheet of blood flowed over the mosaics with their powdering of blue

dust. The Suffet dipped his hand into this hot mire and rubbed his knees

with it: it was a cure.

When evening had come he stole away from the town with his escort, and

made his way into the mountain to rejoin his army.

He succeeded in finding the remains of it.

Four days afterward he was on the top of a defile at Gorza, when the

troops under Spendius appeared below. Twenty stout lances might easily

have checked them by attacking the head of their column, but the

Carthaginians watched them pass by in a state of stupefaction. Hanno

recognised the king of the Numidians in the rearguard; Narr’

Havas bowed to him, at the same time making a sign which he did not

understand.

The return to Carthage took place amid all kinds of terrors. They

marched only at night, hiding in the olive woods during the day.

There were deaths at every halting-place; several times they believed

themselves lost. At last they reached Cape Hermæum, where vessels came

to receive them.

Hanno was so fatigued, so desperate—the loss of the elephants in

particular overwhelmed him—that he demanded poison from Demonades in

order to put an end to it all. Moreover he could already feel himself

stretched upon the cross.

Carthage had not strength enough to be indignant with him. Its losses

had amounted to one hundred thousand nine hundred and seventy-two

shekels of silver, fifteen thousand six hundred and twenty-three shekels

of gold, eighteen elephants, fourteen members of the Great Council,

three hundred of the rich, eight thousand citizens, corn enough for

three moons, a considerable quantity of baggage, and all the engines of

war! The defection of Narr’ Havas was certain, and both sieges were

beginning again. The army under Autaritus now extended from Tunis to

Rhades. From the top of the Acropolis long columns of smoke might be

seen in the country ascending to the sky; they were the mansions of the

rich, which were on fire.

One man alone could have saved the Republic. People repented that

they had slighted him, and the peace party itself voted holocausts for

Hamilcar’s return.

The sight of the zaïmph had upset Salammbô. At night she thought

that she could hear the footsteps of the goddess, and she would awake

terrified and shrieking. Every day she sent food to the temples. Taanach

was worn out with executing her orders, and Schahabarim never left her.

CHAPTER VII HAMILCAR BARCA

The Announcer of the Moons, who watched on the summit of the temple of

Eschmoun every night in order to signal the disturbances of the planet

with his trumpet, one morning perceived towards the west something like

a bird skimming the surface of the sea with its long wings.

It was a ship with three tiers of oars and with a horse carved on the

prow. The sun was rising; the Announcer of the Moons put up his hand

before his eyes, and then grasping his clarion with outstretched arms

sounded a loud brazen cry over Carthage.

People came out of every house; they would not believe what was said;

they disputed with one another; the mole was covered with people. At

last they recognised Hamilcar’s trireme.

It advanced in fierce and haughty fashion, cleaving the foam around it,

the lateen-yard quite square and the sail bulging down the whole length

of the mast; its gigantic oars kept time as they beat the water;

every now and then the extremity of the keel, which was shaped like a

plough-share, would appear, and the ivory-headed horse, rearing both

its feet beneath the spur which terminated the prow, would seem to be

speeding over the plains of the sea.

As it rounded the promontory the wind ceased, the sail fell, and a man

was seen standing bareheaded beside the pilot. It was he, Hamilcar, the

Suffet! About his sides he wore gleaming sheets of steel; a red cloak,

fastened to his shoulders, left his arms visible; two pearls of great

length hung from his ears, and his black, bushy beard rested on his

breast.

The galley, however, tossing amid the rocks, was proceeding along

the side of the mole, and the crowd followed it on the flag-stones,

shouting:

“Greeting! blessing! Eye of Khamon! ah! deliver us! ’Tis the fault

of the rich! they want to put you to death! Take care of yourself,

Barca!”

He made no reply, as if the loud clamour of oceans and battles had

completely deafened him. But when he was below the staircase leading

down from the Acropolis, Hamilcar raised his head, and looked with

folded arms upon the temple of Eschmoun. His gaze mounted higher still,

to the great pure sky; he shouted an order in a harsh voice to his

sailors; the trireme leaped forward; it grazed the idol set up at the

corner of the mole to stay the storms; and in the merchant harbour,

which was full of filth, fragments of wood, and rinds of fruit, it

pushed aside and crushed against the other ships moored to stakes and

terminating in crocodiles’ jaws. The people hastened thither, and some

threw themselves into the water to swim to it. It was already at the

very end before the gate which bristled with nails. The gate rose, and

the trireme disappeared beneath the deep arch.

The Military Harbour was completely separated from the town; when

ambassadors arrived, they had to proceed between two walls through

a passage which had its outlet on the left in front of the temple of

Khamon. This great expanse of water was as round as a cup, and was

bordered with quays on which sheds were built for sheltering the ships.

Before each of these rose two pillars bearing the horns of Ammon on

their capitals and forming continuous porticoes all round the basin. On

an island in the centre stood a house for the marine Suffet.

The water was so limpid that the bottom was visible with its paving

of white pebbles. The noise of the streets did not reach so far, and

Hamilcar as he passed recognised the triremes which he had formerly

commanded.

Not more than twenty perhaps remained, under shelter on the land,

leaning over on their sides or standing upright on their keels, with

lofty poops and swelling prows, and covered with gildings and mystic

symbols. The chimaeras had lost their wings, the Patæc Gods their arms,

the bulls their silver horns;—and half-painted, motionless, and rotten

as they were, yet full of associations, and still emitting the scent

of voyages, they all seemed to say to him, like mutilated soldiers on

seeing their master again, “’Tis we! ’Tis we! and you too are

vanquished!”

No one excepting the marine Suffet might enter the admiral’s house.

So long as there was no proof of his death he was considered as still in

existence. In this way the Ancients avoided a master the more, and they

had not failed to comply with the custom in respect to Hamilcar.

The Suffet proceeded into the deserted apartments. At every step he

recognised armour and furniture—familiar objects which nevertheless

astonished him, and in a perfuming-pan in the vestibule there even

remained the ashes of the perfumes that had been kindled at his

departure for the conjuration of Melkarth. It was not thus that he had

hoped to return. Everything that he had done, everything that he had

seen, unfolded itself in his memory: assaults, conflagrations, legions,

tempests, Drepanum, Syracuse, Lilybæum, Mount Etna, the plateau of

Eryx, five years of battles,—until the fatal day when arms had been

laid down and Sicily had been lost. Then he once more saw the woods of

citron-trees, and herdsmen with their goats on grey mountains; and his

heart leaped at the thought of the establishment of another Carthage

down yonder. His projects and his recollections buzzed through his

head, which was still dizzy from the pitching of the vessel; he was

overwhelmed with anguish, and, becoming suddenly weak, he felt the

necessity of drawing near to the gods.

Then he went up to the highest story of his house, and taking a

nail-studded staple from a golden shell, which hung on his arm, he

opened a small oval chamber.

It was softly lighted by means of delicate black discs let into the

wall and as transparent as glass. Between the rows of these equal discs,

holes, like those for the urns in columbaria, were hollowed out. Each of

them contained a round dark stone, which appeared to be very heavy.

Only people of superior understanding honoured these abaddirs, which had

fallen from the moon. By their fall they denoted the stars, the sky, and

fire; by their colour dark night, and by their density the cohesion of

terrestrial things. A stifling atmosphere filled this mystic place. The

round stones lying in the niches were whitened somewhat with sea-sand

which the wind had no doubt driven through the door. Hamilcar counted

them one after another with the tip of his finger; then he hid his face

in a saffron-coloured veil, and, falling on his knees, stretched himself

on the ground with both arms extended.

The daylight outside was beginning to strike on the folding shutters

of black lattice-work. Arborescences, hillocks, eddies, and ill-defined

animals appeared in their diaphanous thickness; and the light came

terrifying and yet peaceful as it must be behind the sun in the dull

spaces of future creations. He strove to banish from his thoughts all

forms, and all symbols and appellations of the gods, that he might the

better apprehend the immutable spirit which outward appearances took

away. Something of the planetary vitalities penetrated him, and he felt

withal a wiser and more intimate scorn of death and of every accident.

When he rose he was filled with serene fearlessness and was proof

against pity or dread, and as his chest was choking he went to the top

of the tower which overlooked Carthage.

The town sank downwards in a long hollow curve, with its cupolas, its

temples, its golden roofs, its houses, its clusters of palm trees here

and there, and its glass balls with streaming rays, while the ramparts

formed, as it were, the gigantic border of this horn of plenty which

poured itself out before him. Far below he could see the harbours, the

squares, the interiors of the courts, the plan of the streets, and the

people, who seemed very small and but little above the level of the

pavement. Ah! if Hanno had not arrived too late on the morning of

the Ægatian islands! He fastened his eyes on the extreme horizon and

stretched forth his quivering arms in the direction of Rome.

The steps of the Acropolis were occupied by the multitude. In the square

of Khamon the people were pressing forwards to see the Suffet come

out, and the terraces were gradually being loaded with people; a few

recognised him, and he was saluted; but he retired in order the better

to excite the impatience of the people.

Hamilcar found the most important men of his party below in the hall:

Istatten, Subeldia, Hictamon, Yeoubas and others. They related to him

all that had taken place since the conclusion of the peace: the greed

of the Ancients, the departure of the soldiers, their return, their

demands, the capture of Gisco, the theft of the zaïmph, the relief and

subsequent abandonment of Utica; but no one ventured to tell him of the

events which concerned himself. At last they separated, to meet again

during the night at the assembly of the Ancients in the temple of

Moloch.

They had just gone out when a tumult arose outside the door. Some one

was trying to enter in spite of the servants; and as the disturbance was

increasing Hamilcar ordered the stranger to be shown in.

An old Negress made her appearance, broken, wrinkled, trembling,

stupid-looking, wrapped to the heels in ample blue veils. She advanced

face to face with the Suffet, and they looked at each other for some

time; suddenly Hamilcar started; at a wave of his hand the slaves

withdrew. Then, signing to her to walk with precaution, he drew her by

the arm into a remote apartment.

The Negress threw herself upon the floor to kiss his feet; he raised her

brutally.

“Where have you left him, Iddibal?”

“Down there, Master;” and extricating herself from her veils, she

rubbed her face with her sleeve; the black colour, the senile trembling,

the bent figure disappeared, and there remained a strong old man whose

skin seemed tanned by sand, wind, and sea. A tuft of white hair rose on

his skull like the crest of a bird; and he indicated his disguise, as it

lay on the ground, with an ironic glance.

“You have done well, Iddibal! ’Tis well!” Then piercing him, as it

were, with his keen gaze: “No one yet suspects?”

The old man swore to him by the Kabiri that the mystery had been kept.

They never left their cottage, which was three days’ journey from

Hadrumetum, on a shore peopled with turtles, and with palms on the dune.

“And in accordance with your command, O Master! I teach him to hurl

the javelin and to drive a team.”

“He is strong, is he not?”

“Yes, Master, and intrepid as well! He has no fear of serpents, or

thunder, or phantoms. He runs bare-footed like a herdsman along the

brinks of precipices.”

“Speak! speak!”

“He invents snares for wild beasts. Would you believe it, that last

moon he surprised an eagle; he dragged it away, and the bird’s blood

and the child’s were scattered in the air in large drops like driven

roses. The animal in its fury enwrapped him in the beating of its

wings; he strained it against his breast, and as it died his laughter

increased, piercing and proud like the clashing of swords.”

Hamilcar bent his head, dazzled by such presages of greatness.

“But he has been for some time restless and disturbed. He gazes at

the sails passing far out at sea; he is melancholy, he rejects bread,

he inquires about the gods, and he wishes to become acquainted with

Carthage.”

“No, no! not yet!” exclaimed the Suffet.

The old slave seemed to understand the peril which alarmed Hamilcar, and

he resumed:

“How is he to be restrained? Already I am obliged to make him

promises, and I have come to Carthage only to buy him a dagger with

a silver handle and pearls all around it.” Then he told how, having

perceived the Suffet on the terrace, he had passed himself off on the

warders of the harbour as one of Salammbô’s women, so as to make his

way in to him.

Hamilcar remained for a long time apparently lost in deliberation; at

last he said:

“To-morrow you will present yourself at sunset behind the purple

factories in Megara, and imitate a jackal’s cry three times. If you do

not see me, you will return to Carthage on the first day of every moon.

Forget nothing! Love him! You may speak to him now about Hamilcar.”

The slave resumed his costume, and they left the house and the harbour

together.

Hamilcar went on his way alone on foot and without an escort, for the

meetings of the Ancients were, under extraordinary circumstances, always

secret, and were resorted to mysteriously.

At first he went along the western front of the Acropolis, and then

passed through the Green Market, the galleries of Kinisdo, and the

Perfumers’ suburb. The scattered lights were being extinguished, the

broader streets grew still, then shadows glided through the darkness.

They followed him, others appeared, and like him they all directed their

course towards the Mappalian district.

The temple of Moloch was built at the foot of a steep defile in a

sinister spot. From below nothing could be seen but lofty walls rising

indefinitely like those of a monstrous tomb. The night was gloomy, a

greyish fog seemed to weigh upon the sea, which beat against the cliff

with a noise as of death-rattles and sobs; and the shadows gradually

vanished as if they had passed through the walls.

But as soon as the doorway was crossed one found oneself in a vast

quadrangular court bordered by arcades. In the centre rose a mass of

architecture with eight equal faces. It was surmounted by cupolas which

thronged around a second story supporting a kind of rotunda, from which

sprang a cone with a re-entrant curve and terminating in a ball on the

summit.

Fires were burning in cylinders of filigree-work fitted upon poles,

which men were carrying to and fro. These lights flickered in the gusts

of wind and reddened the golden combs which fastened their plaited

hair on the nape of the neck. They ran about calling to one another to

receive the Ancients.

Here and there on the flag-stones huge lions were couched like

sphinxes, living symbols of the devouring sun. They were slumbering with

half-closed eyelids. But roused by the footsteps and voices they rose

slowly, came towards the Ancients, whom they recognised by their dress,

and rubbed themselves against their thighs, arching their backs with

sonorous yawns; the vapour of their breath passed across the light of

the torches. The stir increased, doors closed, all the priests fled,

and the Ancients disappeared beneath the columns which formed a deep

vestibule round the temple.

These columns were arranged in such a way that their circular ranks,

which were contained one within another, showed the Saturnian period

with its years, the years with their months, and the months with their

days, and finally reached to the walls of the sanctuary.

Here it was that the Ancients laid aside their sticks of

narwhal’s-horn,—for a law which was always observed inflicted the

punishment of death upon any one entering the meeting with any kind

of weapon. Several wore a rent repaired with a strip of purple at the

bottom of their garment, to show that they had not been economical in

their dress when mourning for their relatives, and this testimony to

their affliction prevented the slit from growing larger. Others had

their beards inclosed in little bags of violet skin, and fastened to

their ears by two cords. They all accosted one another by embracing

breast to breast. They surrounded Hamilcar with congratulations; they

might have been taken for brothers meeting their brother again.

These men were generally thick-set, with curved noses like those of the

Assyrian colossi. In a few, however, the more prominent cheek-bone, the

taller figure, and the narrower foot, betrayed an African origin

and nomad ancestors. Those who lived continually shut up in their

counting-houses had pale faces; others showed in theirs the severity

of the desert, and strange jewels sparkled on all the fingers of

their hands, which were burnt by unknown suns. The navigators might be

distinguished by their rolling gait, while the men of agriculture

smelt of the wine-press, dried herbs, and the sweat of mules. These

old pirates had lands under tillage, these money-grubbers would fit

out ships, these proprietors of cultivated lands supported slaves who

followed trades. All were skilled in religious discipline, expert in

strategy, pitiless and rich. They looked wearied of prolonged cares.

Their flaming eyes expressed distrust, and their habits of travelling

and lying, trafficking and commanding, gave an appearance of cunning

and violence, a sort of discreet and convulsive brutality to their whole

demeanour. Further, the influence of the god cast a gloom upon them.

They first passed through a vaulted hall which was shaped like an egg.

Seven doors, corresponding to the seven planets, displayed seven squares

of different colours against the wall. After traversing a long room they

entered another similar hall.

A candelabrum completely covered with chiselled flowers was burning at

the far end, and each of its eight golden branches bore a wick of byssus

in a diamond chalice. It was placed upon the last of the long steps

leading to a great altar, the corners of which terminated in horns of

brass. Two lateral staircases led to its flattened summit; the stones

of it could not be seen; it was like a mountain of heaped cinders, and

something indistinct was slowly smoking at the top of it. Then further

back, higher than the candelabrum, and much higher than the altar, rose

the Moloch, all of iron, and with gaping apertures in his human breast.

His outspread wings were stretched upon the wall, his tapering hands

reached down to the ground; three black stones bordered by yellow

circles represented three eyeballs on his brow, and his bull’s head

was raised with a terrible effort as if in order to bellow.

Ebony stools were ranged round the apartment. Behind each of them was

a bronze shaft resting on three claws and supporting a torch. All these

lights were reflected in the mother-of-pearl lozenges which formed the

pavement of the hall. So lofty was the latter that the red colour of the

walls grew black as it rose towards the vaulted roof, and the three eyes

of the idol appeared far above like stars half lost in the night.

The Ancients sat down on the ebony stools after putting the trains of

their robes over their heads. They remained motionless with their hands

crossed inside their broad sleeves, and the mother-of-pearl pavement

seemed like a luminous river streaming from the altar to the door and

flowing beneath their naked feet.

The four pontiffs had their places in the centre, sitting back to back

on four ivory seats which formed a cross, the high-priest of Eschmoun

in a hyacinth robe, the high-priest of Tanith in a white linen robe, the

high-priest of Khamon in a tawny woollen robe, and the high-priest of

Moloch in a purple robe.

Hamilcar advanced towards the candelabrum. He walked all round it,

looking at the burning wicks; then he threw a scented powder upon them,

and violet flames appeared at the extremities of the branches.

Then a shrill voice rose; another replied to it, and the hundred

Ancients, the four pontiffs, and Hamilcar, who remained standing,

simultaneously intoned a hymn, and their voices—ever repeating the

same syllables and strengthening the sounds—rose, grew loud, became

terrible, and then suddenly were still.

There was a pause for some time. At last Hamilcar drew from his breast a

little three-headed statuette, as blue as sapphire, and placed it before

him. It was the image of Truth, the very genius of his speech. Then he

replaced it in his bosom, and all, as if seized with sudden wrath, cried

out:

“They are good friends of yours, are the Barbarians! Infamous traitor!

You come back to see us perish, do you not? Let him speak!—No! no!”

They were taking their revenge for the constraint to which political

ceremonial had just obliged them; and even though they had wished for

Hamilcar’s return, they were now indignant that he had not anticipated

their disasters, or rather that he had not endured them as well as they.

When the tumult had subsided, the pontiff of Moloch rose:

“We ask you why you did not return to Carthage?”

“What is that to you?” replied the Suffet disdainfully.

Their shouts were redoubled.

“Of what do you accuse me? I managed the war badly, perhaps! You have

seen how I order my battles, you who conveniently allow Barbarians—”

“Enough! enough!”

He went on in a low voice so as to make himself the better listened to:

“Oh! that is true! I am wrong, lights of the Baals; there are intrepid

men among you! Gisco, rise!” And surveying the step of the altar with

half-closed eyelids, as if he sought for some one, he repeated:

“Rise, Gisco! You can accuse me; they will protect you! But where is

he?” Then, as if he remembered himself: “Ah! in his house, no doubt!

surrounded by his sons, commanding his slaves, happy, and counting on

the wall the necklaces of honour which his country has given to him!”

They moved about raising their shoulders as if they were being scourged

with thongs. “You do not even know whether he is living or dead!”

And without giving any heed to their clamours he said that in deserting

the Suffet they had deserted the Republic. So, too, the peace with Rome,

however advantageous it might appear to them, was more fatal than twenty

battles. A few—those who were the least rich of the Council and

were suspected of perpetual leanings towards the people or towards

tyranny—applauded. Their opponents, chiefs of the Syssitia and

administrators, triumphed over them in point of numbers; and the more

eminent of them had ranged themselves close to Hanno, who was sitting at

the other end of the hall before the lofty door, which was closed by a

hanging of hyacinth colour.

He had covered the ulcers on his face with paint. But the gold dust in

his hair had fallen upon his shoulders, where it formed two brilliant

sheets, so that his hair appeared whitish, fine, and frizzled like wool.

His hands were enveloped in linen soaked in a greasy perfume, which

dripped upon the pavement, and his disease had no doubt considerably

increased, for his eyes were hidden beneath the folds of his eyelids.

He had thrown back his head in order to see. His partisans urged him to

speak. At last in a hoarse and hideous voice he said:

“Less arrogance, Barca! We have all been vanquished! Each one supports

his own misfortune! Be resigned!”

“Tell us rather,” said Hamilcar, smiling, “how it was that you

steered your galleys into the Roman fleet?”

“I was driven by the wind,” replied Hanno.

“You are like a rhinoceros trampling on his dung: you are

displaying your own folly! be silent!” And they began to indulge in

recriminations respecting the battle of the Ægatian islands.

Hanno accused him of not having come to meet him.

“But that would have left Eryx undefended. You ought to have stood

out from the coast; what prevented you? Ah! I forgot! all elephants are

afraid of the sea!”

Hamilcar’s followers thought this jest so good that they burst

out into loud laughter. The vault rang with it like the beating of

tympanums.

Hanno denounced the unworthiness of such an insult; the disease had

come upon him from a cold taken at the siege of Hecatompylos, and tears

flowed down his face like winter rain on a ruined wall.

Hamilcar resumed:

“If you had loved me as much as him there would be great joy in

Carthage now! How many times did I not call upon you! and you always

refused me money!”

“We had need of it,” said the chiefs of the Syssitia.

“And when things were desperate with me—we drank mules’ urine and

ate the straps of our sandals; when I would fain have had the blades of

grass soldiers and made battalions with the rottenness of our dead, you

recalled the vessels that I had left!”

“We could not risk everything,” replied Baat-Baal, who possessed

gold mines in Darytian Gætulia.

“But what did you do here, at Carthage, in your houses, behind your

walls? There are Gauls on the Eridanus, who ought to have been roused,

Chanaanites at Cyrene who would have come, and while the Romans send

ambassadors to Ptolemæus—”

“Now he is extolling the Romans to us!” Some one shouted out to him:

“How much have they paid you to defend them?”

“Ask that of the plains of Brutium, of the ruins of Locri, of

Metapontum, and of Heraclea! I have burnt all their trees, I

have pillaged all their temples, and even to the death of their

grandchildren’s grandchildren—”

“Why, you disclaim like a rhetor!” said Kapouras, a very illustrious

merchant. “What is it that you want?”

“I say that we must be more ingenious or more terrible! If the whole

of Africa rejects your yoke the reason is, my feeble masters, that you

do not know how to fasten it to her shoulders! Agathocles, Regulus,

Copio, any bold man has only to land and capture her; and when the

Libyans in the east concert with the Numidians in the west, and the

Nomads come from the south, and the Romans from the north”—a cry of

horror rose—“Oh! you will beat your breasts, and roll in the dust,

and tear your cloaks! No matter! you will have to go and turn the

mill-stone in the Suburra, and gather grapes on the hills of Latium.”

They smote their right thighs to mark their sense of the scandal, and

the sleeves of their robes rose like large wings of startled birds.

Hamilcar, carried away by a spirit, continued his speech, standing on

the highest step of the altar, quivering and terrible; he raised his

arms, and the rays from the candelabrum which burned behind him passed

between his fingers like javelins of gold.

“You will lose your ships, your country seats, your chariots, your

hanging beds, and the slaves who rub your feet! The jackal will crouch

in your palaces, and the ploughshare will upturn your tombs. Nothing

will be left but the eagles’ scream and a heap of ruins. Carthage,

thou wilt fall!”

The four pontiffs spread out their hands to avert the anathema. All had

risen. But the marine Suffet, being a sacerdotal magistrate under the

protection of the Sun, was inviolate so long as the assembly of the

rich had not judged him. Terror was associated with the altar. They drew

back.

Hamilcar had ceased speaking, and was panting with eye fixed, his face

as pale as the pearls of his tiara, almost frightened at himself, and

his spirit lost in funereal visions. From the height on which he stood,

all the torches on the bronze shafts seemed to him like a vast crown of

fire laid level with the pavement; black smoke issuing from them mounted

up into the darkness of the vault; and for some minutes the silence was

so profound that they could hear in the distance the sound of the sea.

Then the Ancients began to question one another. Their interests, their

existence, were attacked by the Barbarians. But it was impossible to

conquer them without the assistance of the Suffet, and in spite of their

pride this consideration made them forget every other. His friends were

taken aside. There were interested reconciliations, understandings, and

promises. Hamilcar would not take any further part in any government.

All conjured him. They besought him; and as the word treason occurred

in their speech, he fell into a passion. The sole traitor was the Great

Council, for as the enlistment of the soldiers expired with the war,

they became free as soon as the war was finished; he even exalted their

bravery and all the advantages which might be derived from interesting

them in the Republic by donations and privileges.

Then Magdassin, a former provincial governor, said, as he rolled his

yellow eyes:

“Truly Barca, with your travelling you have become a Greek, or a

Latin, or something! Why speak you of rewards for these men? Rather let

ten thousand Barbarians perish than a single one of us!”

The Ancients nodded approval, murmuring:—“Yes, is there need for so

much trouble? They can always be had?”

“And they can be got rid of conveniently, can they not? They are

deserted as they were by you in Sardinia. The enemy is apprised of the

road which they are to take, as in the case of those Gauls in Sicily,

or perhaps they are disembarked in the middle of the sea. As I was

returning I saw the rock quite white with their bones!”

“What a misfortune!” said Kapouras impudently.

“Have they not gone over to the enemy a hundred times?” cried the

others.

“Why, then,” exclaimed Hamilcar, “did you recall them to Carthage,

notwithstanding your laws? And when they are in your town, poor and

numerous amid all your riches, it does not occur to you to weaken them

by the slightest division! Afterwards you dismiss the whole of them

with their women and children, without keeping a single hostage! Did

you expect that they would murder themselves to spare you the pain of

keeping your oaths? You hate them because they are strong! You hate me

still more, who am their master! Oh! I felt it just now when you were

kissing my hands and were all putting a constraint upon yourselves not

to bite them!”

If the lions that were sleeping in the court had come howling in, the

uproar could not have been more frightful. But the pontiff of Eschmoun

rose, and, standing perfectly upright, with his knees close together,

his elbows pressed to his body, and his hands half open, he said:

“Barca, Carthage has need that you should take the general command of

the Punic forces against the Mercenaries!”

“I refuse,” replied Hamilcar.

“We will give you full authority,” cried the chiefs of the Syssitia.

“No!”

“With no control, no partition, all the money that you want, all

the captives, all the booty, fifty zereths of land for every enemy’s

corpse.”

“No! no! because it is impossible to conquer with you!”

“He is afraid!”

“Because you are cowardly, greedy, ungrateful, pusillanimous and

mad!”

“He is careful of them!”

“In order to put himself at their head,” said some one.

“And return against us,” said another; and from the bottom of the

hall Hanno howled:

“He wants to make himself king!”

Then they bounded up, overturning the seats and the torches: the crowd

of them rushed towards the altar; they brandished daggers. But Hamilcar

dived into his sleeves and drew from them two broad cutlasses; and

half stooping, his left foot advanced, his eyes flaming and his

teeth clenched, he defied them as he stood there beneath the golden

candelabrum.

Thus they had brought weapons with them as a precaution; it was a crime;

they looked with terror at one another. As all were guilty, every one

became quickly reassured; and by degrees they turned their backs on the

Suffet and came down again maddened with humiliation. For the second

time they recoiled before him. They remained standing for some time.

Several who had wounded their fingers put them to their mouths or rolled

them gently in the hem of their mantles, and they were about to depart

when Hamilcar heard these words:

“Why! it is a piece of delicacy to avoid distressing his daughter!”

A louder voice was raised:

“No doubt, since she takes her lovers from among the Mercenaries!”

At first he tottered, then his eye rapidly sought for Schahabarim. But

the priest of Tanith had alone remained in his place; and Hamilcar could

see only his lofty cap in the distance. All were sneering in his face.

In proportion as his anguish increased their joy redoubled, and those

who were behind shouted amid the hootings:

“He was seen coming out of her room!”

“One morning in the month of Tammouz!”

“It was the thief who stole the zaïmph!”

“A very handsome man!”

“Taller than you!”

He snatched off the tiara, the ensign of his rank—his tiara with its

eight mystic rows, and with an emerald shell in the centre—and with

both hands and with all his strength dashed it to the ground; the golden

circles rebounded as they broke, and the pearls rang upon the pavement.

Then they saw a long scar upon the whiteness of his brow; it moved like

a serpent between his eyebrows; all his limbs trembled. He ascended one

of the lateral staircases which led on to the altar, and walked upon

the latter! This was to devote himself to the god, to offer himself as

a holocaust. The motion of his mantle agitated the lights of the

candelabrum, which was lower than his sandals, and the fine dust raised

by his footsteps surrounded him like a cloud as high as the waist. He

stopped between the legs of the brass colossus. He took up two handfuls

of the dust, the mere sight of which made every Carthaginian shudder

with horror, and said:

“By the hundred torches of your Intelligences! by the eight fires of

the Kabiri! by the stars, the meteors, and the volcanoes! by everything

that burns! by the thirst of the desert and the saltness of the ocean!

by the cave of Hadrumetum and the empire of Souls! by extermination! by

the ashes of your sons and the ashes of the brothers of your ancestors

with which I now mingle my own!—you, the Hundred of the Council of

Carthage, have lied in your accusation of my daughter! And I, Hamilcar

Barca, marine Suffet, chief of the rich and ruler of the people, in the

presence of bull-headed Moloch, I swear”—they expected something

frightful, but he resumed in a loftier and calmer tone—“that I will

not even speak to her about it!”

The sacred servants entered wearing their golden combs, some with purple

sponges and others with branches of palm. They raised the hyacinth

curtain which was stretched before the door; and through the opening of

this angle there was visible behind the other halls the great pink

sky which seemed to be a continuation of the vault and to rest at

the horizon upon the blue sea. The sun was issuing from the waves and

mounting upwards. It suddenly struck upon the breast of the brazen

colossus, which was divided into seven compartments closed by gratings.

His red-toothed jaws opened in a horrible yawn; his enormous nostrils

were dilated, the broad daylight animated him, and gave him a terrible

and impatient aspect, as if he would fain have leaped without to mingle

with the star, the god, and together traverse the immensities.

The torches, however, which were scattered on the ground, were still

burning, while here and there on the mother-of-pearl pavement was

stretched from them what looked like spots of blood. The Ancients were

reeling from exhaustion; they filled their lungs inhaling the freshness

of the air; the sweat flowed down their livid faces; they had shouted

so much that they could now scarcely make their voices heard. But their

wrath against the Suffet was not at all abated; they hurled menaces at

him by way of farewells, and Hamilcar answered them again.

“Until the next night, Barca, in the temple of Eschmoun!”

“I shall be there!”

“We will have you condemned by the rich!”

“And I you by the people!”

“Take care that you do not end on the cross!”

“And you that you are not torn to pieces in the streets!”

As soon as they were on the threshold of the court they again assumed a

calm demeanour.

Their runners and coachmen were waiting for them at the door. Most of

them departed on white mules. The Suffet leaped into his chariot and

took the reins; the two animals, curving their necks, and rhythmically

beating the resounding pebbles, went up the whole of the Mappalian Way

at full gallop, and the silver vulture at the extremity of the pole

seemed to fly, so quickly did the chariot pass along.

The road crossed a field planted with slabs of stone, which were painted

on the top like pyramids, and had open hands carved out in the centre as

if all the dead men lying beneath had stretched them out towards heaven

to demand something. Next there came scattered cabins built of earth,

branches, and bulrush-hurdles, and all of a conical shape. These

dwellings, which became constantly denser as the road ascended towards

the Suffet’s gardens, were irregularly separated from one another by

little pebble walls, trenches of spring water, ropes of esparto-grass,

and nopal hedges. But Hamilcar’s eyes were fastened on a great tower,

the three storys of which formed three monster cylinders—the first

being built of stone, the second of brick, and the third all of

cedar—supporting a copper cupola upon twenty-four pillars of juniper,

from which slender interlacing chains of brass hung down after the

manner of garlands. This lofty edifice overlooked the buildings—the

emporiums and mercantile houses—which stretched to the right, while

the women’s palace rose at the end of the cypress trees, which were

ranged in line like two walls of bronze.

When the echoing chariot had entered through the narrow gateway it

stopped beneath a broad shed in which there were shackled horses eating

from heaps of chopped grass.

All the servants hastened up. They formed quite a multitude, those who

worked on the country estates having been brought to Carthage through

fear of the soldiers. The labourers, who were clad in animals’ skins,

had chains riveted to their ankles and trailing after them; the workers

in the purple factories had arms as red as those of executioners; the

sailors wore green caps; the fishermen coral necklaces; the huntsmen

carried nets on their shoulders; and the people belonging to Megara

wore black or white tunics, leathern drawers, and caps of straw, felt or

linen, according to their service or their different occupations.

Behind pressed a tattered populace. They lived without employment remote

from the apartments, slept at night in the gardens, ate the refuse

from the kitchens,—a human mouldiness vegetating in the shadow of

the palace. Hamilcar tolerated them from foresight even more than from

scorn. They had all put a flower in the ear in token of their joy, and

many of them had never seen him.

But men with head-dresses like the Sphinx’s, and furnished with great

sticks, dashed into the crowd, striking right and left. This was to

drive back the slaves, who were curious to see their master, so that he

might not be assailed by their numbers or inconvenienced by their smell.

Then they all threw themselves flat on the ground, crying:

“Eye of Baal, may your house flourish!” And through these people as

they lay thus on the ground in the avenue of cypress trees, Abdalonim,

the Steward of the stewards, waving a white mitre, advanced towards

Hamilcar with a censer in his hand.

Salammbô was then coming down the galley staircases. All her slave

women followed her; and, at each of her steps, they also descended. The

heads of the Negresses formed big black spots on the line of the bands

of the golden plates clasping the foreheads of the Roman women. Others

had silver arrows, emerald butterflies, or long bodkins set like suns in

their hair. Rings, clasps, necklaces, fringes, and bracelets shone amid

the confusion of white, yellow, and blue garments; a rustling of

light material became audible; the pattering of sandals might be heard

together with the dull sound of naked feet as they were set down on the

wood;—and here and there a tall eunuch, head and shoulders above them,

smiled with his face in air. When the shouting of the men had subsided

they hid their faces in their sleeves, and together uttered a strange

cry like the howling of a she-wolf, and so frenzied and strident was

it that it seemed to make the great ebony staircase, with its thronging

women, vibrate from top to bottom like a lyre.

The wind lifted their veils, and the slender stems of the papyrus plant

rocked gently. It was the month of Schebaz and the depth of winter. The

flowering pomegranates swelled against the azure of the sky, and the

sea disappeared through the branches with an island in the distance half

lost in the mist.

Hamilcar stopped on perceiving Salammbô. She had come to him after the

death of several male children. Moreover, the birth of daughters

was considered a calamity in the religions of the Sun. The gods had

afterwards sent him a son; but he still felt something of the betrayal

of his hope, and the shock, as it were, of the curse which he had

uttered against her. Salammbô, however, continued to advance.

Long bunches of various-coloured pearls fell from her ears to her

shoulders, and as far as her elbows. Her hair was crisped so as to

simulate a cloud. Round her neck she wore little quadrangular plates of

gold, representing a woman between two rampant lions; and her costume

was a complete reproduction of the equipment of the goddess. Her

broad-sleeved hyacinth robe fitted close to her figure, widening out

below. The vermilion on her lips gave additional whiteness to her teeth,

and the antimony on her eyelids greater length to her eyes. Her sandals,

which were cut out in bird’s plumage, had very high heels, and she was

extraordinarily pale, doubtless on account of the cold.

At last she came close to Hamilcar, and without looking at him, without

raising her head to him:

“Greeting, eye of Baalim, eternal glory! triumph! leisure!

satisfaction! riches! Long has my heart been sad and the house drooping.

But the returning master is like reviving Tammouz; and beneath

your gaze, O father, joyfulness and a new existence will everywhere

prevail!”

And taking from Taanach’s hands a little oblong vase wherein smoked

a mixture of meal, butter, cardamom, and wine: “Drink freely,” said

she, “of the returning cup, which your servant has prepared!”

He replied: “A blessing upon you!” and he mechanically grasped the

golden vase which she held out to him.

He scanned her, however, with such harsh attention, that Salammbô was

troubled and stammered out:

“They have told you, O Master!”

“Yes! I know!” said Hamilcar in a low voice.

Was this a confession, or was she speaking of the Barbarians? And he

added a few vague words upon the public embarrassments which he hoped by

his sole efforts to clear away.

“O father!” exclaimed Salammbô, “you will not obliterate what is

irreparable!”

Then he drew back and Salammbô was astonished at his amazement; for

she was not thinking of Carthage but of the sacrilege in which she found

herself implicated. This man, who made legions tremble and whom she

hardly knew, terrified her like a god; he had guessed, he knew all,

something awful was about to happen. “Pardon!” she cried.

Hamilcar slowly bowed his head.

Although she wished to accuse herself she dared not open her lips; and

yet she felt stifled with the need of complaining and being comforted.

Hamilcar was struggling against a longing to break his oath. He kept it

out of pride or from the dread of putting an end to his uncertainty; and

he looked into her face with all his might so as to lay hold on what she

kept concealed at the bottom of her heart.

By degrees the panting Salammbô, crushed by such heavy looks, let her

head sink below her shoulders. He was now sure that she had erred in

the embrace of a Barbarian; he shuddered and raised both his fists. She

uttered a shriek and fell down among her women, who crowded around her.

Hamilcar turned on his heel. All the stewards followed him.

The door of the emporiums was opened, and he entered a vast round hall

form which long passages leading to other halls branched off like the

spokes from the nave of a wheel. A stone disc stood in the centre with

balustrades to support the cushions that were heaped up upon carpets.

The Suffet walked at first with rapid strides; he breathed noisily, he

struck the ground with his heel, and drew his hand across his forehead

like a man annoyed by flies. But he shook his head, and as he perceived

the accumulation of his riches he became calm; his thoughts, which were

attracted by the vistas in the passages, wandered to the other halls

that were full of still rarer treasures. Bronze plates, silver ingots,

and iron bars alternated with pigs of tin brought from the Cassiterides

over the Dark Sea; gums from the country of the Blacks were running over

their bags of palm bark; and gold dust heaped up in leathern bottles was

insensibly creeping out through the worn-out seams. Delicate filaments

drawn from marine plants hung amid flax from Egypt, Greece, Taprobane

and Judæa; mandrepores bristled like large bushes at the foot of the

walls; and an indefinable odour—the exhalation from perfumes, leather,

spices, and ostrich feathers, the latter tied in great bunches at the

very top of the vault—floated through the air. An arch was formed

above the door before each passage with elephants’ teeth placed

upright and meeting together at the points.

At last he ascended the stone disc. All the stewards stood with arms

folded and heads bent while Abdalonim reared his pointed mitre with a

haughty air.

Hamilcar questioned the Chief of the Ships. He was an old pilot with

eyelids chafed by the wind, and white locks fell to his hips as if

dashing foam of the tempests had remained on his beard.

He replied that he had sent a fleet by Gades and Thymiamata to try to

reach Eziongaber by doubling the Southern Horn and the promontory of

Aromata.

Others had advanced continuously towards the west for four moons without

meeting with any shore; but the ships prows became entangled in

weeds, the horizon echoed continually with the noise of cataracts,

blood-coloured mists darkened the sun, a perfume-laden breeze lulled the

crews to sleep; and their memories were so disturbed that they were now

unable to tell anything. However, expeditions had ascended the rivers of

the Scythians, had made their way into Colchis, and into the countries

of the Jugrians and of the Estians, had carried off fifteen hundred

maidens in the Archipelago, and sunk all the strange vessels sailing

beyond Cape Oestrymon, so that the secret of the routes should not

be known. King Ptolemæus was detaining the incense from Schesbar;

Syracuse, Elathia, Corsica, and the islands had furnished nothing, and

the old pilot lowered his voice to announce that a trireme was taken at

Rusicada by the Numidians,—“for they are with them, Master.”

Hamilcar knit his brows; then he signed to the Chief of the Journeys to

speak. This functionary was enveloped in a brown, ungirdled robe, and

had his head covered with a long scarf of white stuff which passed along

the edge of his lips and fell upon his shoulder behind.

The caravans had set out regularly at the winter equinox. But of fifteen

hundred men directing their course towards the extreme boundaries of

Ethiopia with excellent camels, new leathern bottles, and supplies of

painted cloth, but one had reappeared at Carthage—the rest having died

of fatigue or become mad through the terror of the desert;—and he said

that far beyond the Black Harousch, after passing the Atarantes and the

country of the great apes, he had seen immense kingdoms, wherein the

pettiest utensils were all of gold, a river of the colour of milk and

as broad as the sea, forests of blue trees, hills of aromatics, monsters

with human faces vegetating on the rocks with eyeballs which expanded

like flowers to look at you; and then crystal mountains supporting the

sun behind lakes all covered with dragons. Others had returned from

India with peacocks, pepper, and new textures. As to those who go by way

of the Syrtes and the temple of Ammon to purchase chalcedony, they had

no doubt perished in the sands. The caravans from Gætulia and Phazzana

had furnished their usual supplies; but he, the Chief of the Journeys,

did not venture to fit one out just now.

Hamilcar understood; the Mercenaries were in occupation of the country.

He leaned upon his other elbow with a hollow groan; and the Chief of

Farms was so afraid to speak that he trembled horribly in spite of

his thick shoulders and his big red eyeballs. His face, which was as

snub-nosed as a mastiff’s, was surmounted by a net woven of threads

of bark. He wore a waist-belt of hairy leopard’s skin, wherein gleamed

two formidable cutlasses.

As soon as Hamilcar turned away he began to cry aloud and invoke all the

Baals. It was not his fault! he could not help it! He had watched the

temperature, the soil, the stars, had planted at the winter solstice and

pruned at the waning of the moon, had inspected the slaves and had been

careful of their clothes.

But Hamilcar grew angry at this loquacity. He clacked his tongue, and

the man with the cutlasses went on in rapid tones:

“Ah, Master! they have pillaged everything! sacked everything!

destroyed everything! Three thousand trees have been cut down at

Maschala, and at Ubada the granaries have been looted and the cisterns

filled up! At Tedes they have carried off fifteen hundred gomors of

meal; at Marrazana they have killed the shepherds, eaten the flocks,

burnt your house—your beautiful house with its cedar beams, which

you used to visit in the summer! The slaves at Tuburbo who were reaping

barley fled to the mountains; and the asses, the mules both great and

small, the oxen from Taormina, and the antelopes,—not a single one

left! all carried away! It is a curse! I shall not survive it!” He

went on again in tears: “Ah! if you knew how full the cellars

were, and how the ploughshares shone! Ah! the fine rams! ah! the fine

bulls!—”

Hamilcar’s wrath was choking him. It burst forth:

“Be silent! Am I a pauper then? No lies! speak the truth! I wish

to know all that I have lost to the last shekel, to the last cab!

Abdalonim, bring me the accounts of the ships, of the caravans, of the

farms, of the house! And if your consciences are not clear, woe be on

your heads! Go out!”

All the stewards went out walking backwards, with their fists touching

the ground.

Abdalonim went up to a set of pigeon-holes in the wall, and from the

midst of them took out knotted cords, strips of linen or papyrus, and

sheeps’ shoulder-blades inscribed with delicate writing. He laid them

at Hamilcar’s feet, placed in his hands a wooden frame furnished on

the inside with three threads on which balls of gold, silver, and horn

were strung, and began:

“One hundred and ninety-two houses in the Mappalian district let to

the New Carthaginians at the rate of one bekah a moon.”

“No! it is too much! be lenient towards the poor people! and you will

try to learn whether they are attached to the Republic, and write

down the names of those who appear to you to be the most daring! What

next?”

Abdalonim hesitated in surprise at such generosity.

Hamilcar snatched the strips of linen from his hands.

“What is this? three palaces around Khamon at twelve kesitahs a month!

Make it twenty! I do not want to be eaten up by the rich.”

The Steward of the stewards, after a long salutation, resumed:

“Lent to Tigillas until the end of the season two kikars at three per

cent., maritime interest; to Bar-Malkarth fifteen hundred shekels on the

security of thirty slaves. But twelve have died in the salt-marshes.”

“That is because they were not hardy,” said the Suffet, laughing.

“No matter! if he is in want of money, satisfy him! We should always

lend, and at different rates of interest, according to the wealth of the

individual.”

Then the servant hastened to read all that had been brought in by the

iron-mines of Annaba, the coral fisheries, the purple factories, the

farming of the tax on the resident Greeks, the export of silver to

Arabia, where it had ten times the value of gold, and the captures of

vessels, deduction of a tenth being made for the temple of the goddess.

“Each time I declared a quarter less, Master!” Hamilcar was

reckoning with the balls; they rang beneath his fingers.

“Enough! What have you paid?”

“To Stratonicles of Corinth, and to three Alexandrian merchants, on

these letters here (they have been realised), ten thousand Athenian

drachmas, and twelve Syrian talents of gold. The food for the crews,

amounting to twenty minæ a month for each trireme—”

“I know! How many lost?”

“Here is the account on these sheets of lead,” said the Steward.

“As to the ships chartered in common, it has often been necessary

to throw the cargo into the seas, and so the unequal losses have been

divided among the partners. For the ropes which were borrowed from the

arsenals, and which it was impossible to restore, the Syssitia exacted

eight hundred kesitahs before the expedition to Utica.”

“They again!” said Hamilcar, hanging his head; and he remained for a

time as if quite crushed by the weight of all the hatreds that he could

feel upon him. “But I do not see the Megara expenses?”

Abdalonim, turning pale, went to another set of pigeon-holes, and

took from them some planchettes of sycamore wood strung in packets on

leathern strings.

Hamilcar, curious about these domestic details, listened to him and

grew calm with the monotony of the tones in which the figures were

enumerated. Abdalonim became slower. Suddenly he let the wooden sheets

fall to the ground and threw himself flat on his face with his arms

stretched out in the position of a condemned criminal. Hamilcar picked

up the tablets without any emotion; and his lips parted and his eyes

grew larger when he perceived an exorbitant consumption of meat, fish,

birds, wines, and aromatics, with broken vases, dead slaves, and spoiled

carpets set down as the expense of a single day.

Abdalonim, still prostrate, told him of the feast of the Barbarians.

He had not been able to avoid the command of the Ancients. Moreover,

Salammbô desired money to be lavished for the better reception of the

soldiers.

At his daughter’s name Hamilcar leaped to his feet. Then with

compressed lips he crouched down upon the cushions, tearing the fringes

with his nails, and panting with staring eyes.

“Rise!” said he; and he descended.

Abdalonim followed him; his knees trembled. But seizing an iron bar he

began like one distraught to loosen the paving stones. A wooden disc

sprang up and soon there appeared throughout the length of the passage

several of the large covers employed for stopping up the trenches in

which grain was kept.

“You see, Eye of Baal,” said the servant, trembling, “they have

not taken everything yet! and these are each fifty cubits deep and

filled up to the brim! During your voyage I had them dug out in the

arsenals, in the gardens, everywhere! your house is full of corn as your

heart is full of wisdom.”

A smile passed over Hamilcar’s face. “It is well, Abdalonim!”

Then bending over to his ear: “You will have it brought from Etruria,

Brutium, whence you will, and no matter at what price! Heap it and keep

it! I alone must possess all the corn in Carthage.”

Then when they were alone at the extremity of the passage, Abdalonim,

with one of the keys hanging at his girdle, opened a large quadrangular

chamber divided in the centre by pillars of cedar. Gold, silver, and

brass coins were arranged on tables or packed into niches, and rose

as high as the joists of the roof along the four walls. In the corners

there were huge baskets of hippopotamus skin supporting whole rows of

smaller bags; there were hillocks formed of heaps of bullion on the

pavement; and here and there a pile that was too high had given way and

looked like a ruined column. The large Carthaginian pieces, representing

Tanith with a horse beneath a palm-tree, mingled with those from the

colonies, which were marked with a bull, star, globe, or crescent. Then

there might be seen pieces of all values, dimensions, and ages arrayed

in unequal amounts—from the ancient coins of Assyria, slender as the

nail, to the ancient ones of Latium, thicker than the hand, with the

buttons of Egina, the tablets of Bactriana, and the short bars of

Lacedæmon; many were covered with rust, or had grown greasy, or, having

been taken in nets or from among the ruins of captured cities, were

green with the water or blackened by fire. The Suffet had speedily

calculated whether the sums present corresponded with the gains and

losses which had just been read to him; and he was going away when he

perceived three brass jars completely empty. Abdalonim turned away his

head to mark his horror, and Hamilcar, resigning himself to it, said

nothing.

They crossed other passages and other halls, and at last reached a door

where, to ensure its better protection and in accordance with a Roman

custom lately introduced into Carthage, a man was fastened by the waist

to a long chain let into the wall. His beard and nails had grown to an

immoderate length, and he swayed himself from right to left with that

continual oscillation which is characteristic of captive animals. As

soon as he recognised Hamilcar he darted towards him, crying:

“Pardon, Eye of Baal! pity! kill me! For ten years I have not seen the

sun! In your father’s name, pardon!”

Hamilcar, without answering him, clapped his hands and three men

appeared; and all four simultaneously stiffening their arms, drew back

from its rings the enormous bar which closed the door. Hamilcar took a

torch and disappeared into the darkness.

This was believed to be the family burying-place; but nothing would have

been found in it except a broad well. It was dug out merely to baffle

robbers, and it concealed nothing. Hamilcar passed along beside it; then

stooping down he made a very heavy millstone turn upon its rollers, and

through this aperture entered an apartment which was built in the shape

of a cone.

The walls were covered with scales of brass; and in the centre, on a

granite pedestal, stood the statue of one of the Kabiri called Aletes,

the discoverer of the mines in Celtiberia. On the ground, at its base,

and arranged in the form of a cross, were large gold shields and monster

close-necked silver vases, of extravagant shape and unfitted for use;

it was customary to cast quantities of metal in this way, so that

dilapidation and even removal should be almost impossible.

With his torch he lit a miner’s lamp which was fastened to the

idol’s cap, and green, yellow, blue, violet, wine-coloured, and

blood-coloured fires suddenly illuminated the hall. It was filled with

gems which were either in gold calabashes fastened like sconces upon

sheets of brass, or were ranged in native masses at the foot of the

wall. There were callaides shot away from the mountains with slings,

carbuncles formed by the urine of the lynx, glossopetræ which had

fallen from the moon, tyanos, diamonds, sandastra, beryls, with the

three kinds of rubies, the four kinds of sapphires, and the twelve

kinds of emeralds. They gleamed like splashes of milk, blue icicles, and

silver dust, and shed their light in sheets, rays, and stars. Ceraunia,

engendered by the thunder, sparkled by the side of chalcedonies, which

are a cure for poison. There were topazes from Mount Zabarca to avert

terrors, opals from Bactriana to prevent abortions, and horns of Ammon,

which are placed under the bed to induce dreams.

The fires from the stones and the flames from the lamp were mirrored in

the great golden shields. Hamilcar stood smiling with folded arms, and

was less delighted by the sight of his riches than by the consciousness

of their possession. They were inaccessible, exhaustless, infinite.

His ancestors sleeping beneath his feet transmitted something of their

eternity to his heart. He felt very near to the subterranean deities.

It was as the joy of one of the Kabiri; and the great luminous rays

striking upon his face looked like the extremity of an invisible net

linking him across the abysses with the centre of the world.

A thought came which made him shudder, and placing himself behind the

idol he walked straight up to the wall. Then among the tattooings on his

arm he scrutinised a horizontal line with two other perpendicular ones

which in Chanaanitish figures expressed the number thirteen. Then he

counted as far as the thirteenth of the brass plates and again raised

his ample sleeve; and with his right hand stretched out he read other

more complicated lines on his arm, at the same time moving his fingers

daintily about like one playing on a lyre. At last he struck seven blows

with his thumb, and an entire section of the wall turned about in a

single block.

It served to conceal a sort of cellar containing mysterious things which

had no name and were of incalculable value. Hamilcar went down the three

steps, took up a llama’s skin which was floating on a black liquid in

a silver vat, and then re-ascended.

Abdalonim again began to walk before him. He struck the pavement with

his tall cane, the pommel of which was adorned with bells, and before

every apartment cried aloud the name of Hamilcar amid eulogies and

benedictions.

Along the walls of the circular gallery, from which the passages

branched off, were piled little beams of algummim, bags of Lawsonia,

cakes of Lemnos-earth, and tortoise carapaces filled with pearls. The

Suffet brushed them with his robe as he passed without even looking at

some gigantic pieces of amber, an almost divine material formed by the

rays of the sun.

A cloud of odorous vapour burst forth.

“Push open the door!”

They went in.

Naked men were kneading pastes, crushing herbs, stirring coals, pouring

oil into jars, and opening and shutting the little ovoid cells which

were hollowed out all round in the wall, and were so numerous that

the apartment was like the interior of a hive. They were brimful of

myrobalan, bdellium, saffron, and violets. Gums, powders, roots, glass

phials, branches of filipendula, and rose-petals were scattered about

everywhere, and the scents were stifling in spite of the cloud-wreaths

from the styrax shrivelling on a brazen tripod in the centre.

The Chief of the Sweet Odours, pale and long as a waxen torch, came up

to Hamilcar to crush a roll of metopion in his hands, while two others

rubbed his heels with leaves of baccharis. He repelled them; they were

Cyreneans of infamous morals, but valued on account of the secrets which

they possessed.

To show his vigilance the Chief of the Odours offered the Suffet a

little malobathrum to taste in an electrum spoon; then he pierced three

Indian bezoars with an awl. The master, who knew the artifices employed,

took a horn full of balm, and after holding it near the coals inclined

it over his robe. A brown spot appeared; it was a fraud. Then he gazed

fixedly at the Chief of the Odours, and without saying anything flung

the gazelle’s horn full in his face.

However indignant he might be at adulterations made to his own

prejudice, when he perceived some parcels of nard which were being

packed up for countries beyond the sea, he ordered antimony to be mixed

with it so as to make it heavier.

Then he asked where three boxes of psagdas designed for his own use were

to be found.

The Chief of the Odours confessed that he did not know; some soldiers

had come howling in with knives and he had opened the boxes for them.

“So you are more afraid of them then of me!” cried the Suffet; and

his eyeballs flashed like torches through the smoke upon the tall, pale

man who was beginning to understand. “Abdalonim! you will make him run

the gauntlet before sunset: tear him!”

This loss, which was less than the others, had exasperated him; for in

spite of his efforts to banish them from his thoughts he was continually

coming again across the Barbarians. Their excesses were blended with

his daughter’s shame, and he was angry with the whole household for

knowing of the latter and for not speaking of it to him. But something

impelled him to bury himself in his misfortune; and in an inquisitorial

fit he visited the sheds behind the mercantile house to see the

supplies of bitumen, wood, anchors and cordage, honey and wax, the cloth

warehouse, the stores of food, the marble yard and the silphium barn.

He went to the other side of the gardens to make an inspection in their

cottages, of the domestic artisans whose productions were sold. There

were tailors embroidering cloaks, others making nets, others painting

cushions or cutting out sandals, and Egyptian workmen polished papyrus

with a shell, while the weavers’ shuttles rattled and the armourers’

anvils rang.

Hamilcar said to them:

“Beat away at the swords! I shall want them.” And he drew the

antelope’s skin that had been steeped in poisons from his bosom to

have it cut into a cuirass more solid than one of brass and unassailable

by steel or flame.

As soon as he approached the workmen, Abdalonim, to give his wrath

another direction, tried to anger him against them by murmured

disparagement of their work. “What a performance! It is a shame! The

Master is indeed too good.” Hamilcar moved away without listening to

him.

He slackened his pace, for the paths were barred by great trees calcined

from one end to the other, such as may be met with in woods where

shepherds have encamped; and the palings were broken, the water in the

trenches was disappearing, while fragments of glass and the bones of

apes were to be seen amid the miry puddles. A scrap of cloth hung

here and there from the bushes, and the rotten flowers formed a yellow

muck-heap beneath the citron trees. In fact, the servants had neglected

everything, thinking that the master would never return.

At every step he discovered some new disaster, some further proof of the

thing which he had forbidden himself to learn. Here he was soiling his

purple boots as he crushed the filth under-foot; and he had not all

these men before him at the end of a catapult to make them fly into

fragments! He felt humiliated at having defended them; it was a delusion

and a piece of treachery; and as he could not revenge himself upon

the soldiers, or the Ancients, or Salammbô, or anybody, and his wrath

required some victim, he condemned all the slaves of the gardens to the

mines at a single stroke.

Abdalonim shuddered each time that he saw him approaching the parks. But

Hamilcar took the path towards the mill, from which there might be heard

issuing a mournful melopoia.

The heavy mill-stones were turning amid the dust. They consisted of two

cones of porphyry laid the one upon the other—the upper one of the

two, which carried a funnel, being made to revolve upon the second by

means of strong bars. Some men were pushing these with their breasts

and arms, while others were yoked to them and were pulling them. The

friction of the straps had formed purulent scabs round about their

armpits such as are seen on asses’ withers, and the end of the limp

black rag, which scarcely covered their loins, hung down and flapped

against their hams like a long tail. Their eyes were red, the irons on

their feet clanked, and all their breasts panted rhythmically. On their

mouths they had muzzles fastened by two little bronze chains to render

it impossible for them to eat the flour, and their hands were enclosed

in gauntlets without fingers, so as to prevent them from taking any.

At the master’s entrance the wooden bars creaked still more loudly.

The grain grated as it was being crushed. Several fell upon their knees;

the others, continuing their work, stepped across them.

He asked for Giddenem, the governor of the slaves, and that personage

appeared, his rank being displayed in the richness of his dress. His

tunic, which was slit up the sides, was of fine purple; his ears were

weighted with heavy rings; and the strips of cloth enfolding his legs

were joined together with a lacing of gold which extended from his

ankles to his hips, like a serpent winding about a tree. In his fingers,

which were laden with rings, he held a necklace of jet beads, so as to

recognise the men who were subject to the sacred disease.

Hamilcar signed to him to unfasten the muzzles. Then with the cries of

famished animals they all rushed upon the flour, burying their faces in

the heaps of it and devouring it.

“You are weakening them!” said the Suffet.

Giddenem replied that such treatment was necessary in order to subdue

them.

“It was scarcely worth while sending you to the slaves’ school at

Syracuse. Fetch the others!”

And the cooks, butlers, grooms, runners, and litter-carriers, the men

belonging to the vapour-baths, and the women with their children, all

ranged themselves in a single line in the garden from the mercantile

house to the deer park. They held their breath. An immense silence

prevailed in Megara. The sun was lengthening across the lagoon at the

foot of the catacombs. The peacocks were screeching. Hamilcar walked

along step by step.

“What am I to do with these old creatures?” he said. “Sell them!

There are too many Gauls: they are drunkards! and too many Cretans: they

are liars! Buy me some Cappadocians, Asiatics, and Negroes.”

He was astonished that the children were so few. “The house ought to

have births every year, Giddenem. You will leave the huts open every

night to let them mingle freely.”

He then had the thieves, the lazy, and the mutinous shown to him. He

distributed punishments, with reproaches to Giddenem; and Giddenem,

ox-like, bent his low forehead, with its two broad intersecting

eyebrows.

“See, Eye of Baal,” he said, pointing out a sturdy Libyan, “here

is one who was caught with the rope round his neck.”

“Ah! you wish to die?” said the Suffet scornfully.

“Yes!” replied the slave in an intrepid tone.

Then, without heeding the precedent or the pecuniary loss, Hamilcar said

to the serving-men:

“Away with him!”

Perhaps in his thoughts he intended a sacrifice. It was a misfortune

which he inflicted upon himself in order to avert more terrible ones.

Giddenem had hidden those who were mutilated behind the others. Hamilcar

perceived them.

“Who cut off your arm?”

“The soldiers, Eye of Baal.”

Then to a Samnite who was staggering like a wounded heron:

“And you, who did that to you?”

It was the governor, who had broken his leg with an iron bar.

This silly atrocity made the Suffet indignant; he snatched the jet

necklace out of Giddenem’s hands.

“Cursed be the dog that injures the flock! Gracious Tanith, to cripple

slaves! Ah! you ruin your master! Let him be smothered in the dunghill.

And those that are missing? Where are they? Have you helped the soldiers

to murder them?”

His face was so terrible that all the women fled. The slaves drew back

and formed a large circle around them; Giddenem was frantically kissing

his sandals; Hamilcar stood upright with his arms raised above him.

But with his understanding as clear as in the sternest of his battles,

he recalled a thousand odious things, ignominies from which he had

turned aside; and in the gleaming of his wrath he could once more see

all his disasters simultaneously as in the lightnings of a storm.

The governors of the country estates had fled through terror of the

soldiers, perhaps through collusion with them; they were all deceiving

him; he had restrained himself too long.

“Bring them here!” he cried; “and brand them on the forehead with

red-hot irons as cowards!”

Then they brought and spread out in the middle of the garden, fetters,

carcanets, knives, chains for those condemned to the mines, cippi for

fastening the legs, numellæ for confining the shoulders, and scorpions

or whips with triple thongs terminating in brass claws.

All were placed facing the sun, in the direction of Moloch the Devourer,

and were stretched on the ground on their stomachs or on their backs,

those, however, who were sentenced to be flogged standing upright

against the trees with two men beside them, one counting the blows and

the other striking.

In striking he used both his arms, and the whistling thongs made the

bark of the plane-trees fly. The blood was scattered like rain upon the

foliage, and red masses writhed with howls at the foot of the trees.

Those who were under the iron tore their faces with their nails.

The wooden screws could be heard creaking; dull knockings resounded;

sometimes a sharp cry would suddenly pierce the air. In the direction of

the kitchens, men were brisking up burning coals with fans amid

tattered garments and scattered hair, and a smell of burning flesh was

perceptible. Those who were under the scourge, swooning, but kept in

their positions by the bonds on their arms, rolled their heads upon

their shoulders and closed their eyes. The others who were watching

them began to shriek with terror, and the lions, remembering the feast

perhaps, stretched themselves out yawning against the edge of the dens.

Then Salammbô was seen on the platform of her terrace. She ran wildly

about it from left to right. Hamilcar perceived her. It seemed to him

that she was holding up her arms towards him to ask for pardon; with a

gesture of horror he plunged into the elephants’ park.

These animals were the pride of the great Punic houses. They had carried

their ancestors, had triumphed in the wars, and they were reverenced as

being the favourites of the Sun.

Those of Megara were the strongest in Carthage. Before he went away

Hamilcar had required Abdalonim to swear that he would watch over them.

But they had died from their mutilations; and only three remained, lying

in the middle of the court in the dust before the ruins of their manger.

They recognised him and came up to him. One had its ears horribly slit,

another had a large wound in its knee, while the trunk of the third was

cut off.

They looked sadly at him, like reasonable creatures; and the one that

had lost its trunk tried by stooping its huge head and bending its hams

to stroke him softly with the hideous extremity of its stump.

At this caress from the animal two tears started into his eyes. He

rushed at Abdalonim.

“Ah! wretch! the cross! the cross!”

Abdalonim fell back swooning upon the ground.

The bark of a jackal rang from behind the purple factories, the blue

smoke of which was ascending slowly into the sky; Hamilcar paused.

The thought of his son had suddenly calmed him like the touch of a

god. He caught a glimpse of a prolongation of his might, an indefinite

continuation of his personality, and the slaves could not understand

whence this appeasement had come upon him.

As he bent his steps towards the purple factories he passed before the

ergastulum, which was a long house of black stone built in a square pit

with a small pathway all round it and four staircases at the corners.

Iddibal was doubtless waiting until the night to finish his signal.

“There is no hurry yet,” thought Hamilcar; and he went down into the

prison. Some cried out to him: “Return”; the boldest followed him.

The open door was flapping in the wind. The twilight entered through

the narrow loopholes, and in the interior broken chains could be

distinguished hanging from the walls.

This was all that remained of the captives of war!

Then Hamilcar grew extraordinarily pale, and those who were leaning

over the pit outside saw him resting one hand against the wall to keep

himself from falling.

But the jackal uttered its cry three times in succession. Hamilcar

raised his head; he did not speak a word nor make a gesture. Then when

the sun had completely set he disappeared behind the nopal hedge, and in

the evening he said as he entered the assembly of the rich in the temple

of Eschmoun:

“Luminaries of the Baalim, I accept the command of the Punic forces

against the army of the Barbarians!”

CHAPTER VIII THE BATTLE OF THE MACARAS

In the following day he drew two hundred and twenty-three thousand

kikars of gold from the Syssitia, and decreed a tax of fourteen shekels

upon the rich. Even the women contributed; payment was made in behalf

of the children, and he compelled the colleges of priests to furnish

money—a monstrous thing, according to Carthaginian customs.

He demanded all the horses, mules, and arms. A few tried to conceal

their wealth, and their property was sold; and, to intimidate the

avarice of the rest, he himself gave sixty suits of armour, and fifteen

hundred gomers of meal, which was as much as was given by the Ivory

Company.

He sent into Liguria to buy soldiers, three thousand mountaineers

accustomed to fight with bears; they were paid for six moons in advance

at the rate of four minæ a day.

Nevertheless an army was wanted. But he did not, like Hanno, accept all

the citizens. First he rejected those engaged in sedentary occupations,

and then those who were big-bellied or had a pusillanimous look; and he

admitted those of ill-repute, the scum of Malqua, sons of Barbarians,

freed men. For reward he promised some of the New Carthaginians complete

rights of citizenship.

His first care was to reform the Legion. These handsome young fellows,

who regarded themselves as the military majesty of the Republic,

governed themselves. He reduced their officers to the ranks; he treated

them harshly, made them run, leap, ascend the declivity of Byrsa at a

single burst, hurl javelins, wrestle together, and sleep in the squares

at night. Their families used to come to see them and pity them.

He ordered shorter swords and stronger buskins. He fixed the number of

serving-men, and reduced the amount of baggage; and as there were three

hundred Roman pila kept in the temple of Moloch, he took them in spite

of the pontiff’s protests.

He organised a phalanx of seventy-two elephants with those which

had returned from Utica, and others which were private property, and

rendered them formidable. He armed their drivers with mallet and chisel

to enable them to split their skulls in the fight if they ran away.

He would not allow his generals to be nominated by the Grand Council.

The Ancients tried to urge the laws in objection, but he set them aside;

no one ventured to murmur again, and everything yielded to the violence

of his genius.

He assumed sole charge of the war, the government, and the finances;

and as a precaution against accusations he demanded the Suffet Hanno as

examiner of his accounts.

He set to work upon the ramparts, and had the old and now useless inner

walls demolished in order to furnish stones. But difference of fortune,

replacing the hierarchy of race, still kept the sons of the vanquished

and those of the conquerors apart; thus the patricians viewed the

destruction of these ruins with an angry eye, while the plebeians,

scarcely knowing why, rejoiced.

The troops defiled under arms through the streets from morning till

night; every moment the sound of trumpets was heard; chariots passed

bearing shields, tents, and pikes; the courts were full of women engaged

in tearing up linen; the enthusiasm spread from one to another, and

Hamilcar’s soul filled the Republic.

He had divided his soldiers into even numbers, being careful to place

a strong man and a weak one alternately throughout the length of his

files, so that he who was less vigorous or more cowardly might be at

once led and pushed forward by two others. But with his three thousand

Ligurians, and the best in Carthage, he could form only a simple phalanx

of four thousand and ninety-six hoplites, protected by bronze helmets,

and handling ashen sarissæ fourteen cubits long.

There were two thousand young men, each equipped with a sling, a dagger,

and sandals. He reinforced them with eight hundred others armed with

round shields and Roman swords.

The heavy cavalry was composed of the nineteen hundred remaining

guardsmen of the Legion, covered with plates of vermilion bronze, like

the Assyrian Clinabarians. He had further four hundred mounted archers,

of those that were called Tarentines, with caps of weasel’s skin,

two-edged axes, and leathern tunics. Finally there were twelve hundred

Negroes from the quarter of the caravans, who were mingled with the

Clinabarians, and were to run beside the stallions with one hand resting

on the manes. All was ready, and yet Hamilcar did not start.

Often at night he would go out of Carthage alone and make his way beyond

the lagoon towards the mouths of the Macaras. Did he intend to join the

Mercenaries? The Ligurians encamped in the Mappalian district surrounded

his house.

The apprehensions of the rich appeared justified when, one day, three

hundred Barbarians were seen approaching the walls. The Suffet opened

the gates to them; they were deserters; drawn by fear or by fidelity,

they were hastening to their master.

Hamilcar’s return had not surprised the Mercenaries; according to

their ideas the man could not die. He was returning to fulfil his

promise;—a hope by no means absurd, so deep was the abyss between

Country and Army. Moreover they did not believe themselves culpable; the

feast was forgotten.

The spies whom they surprised undeceived them. It was a triumph for the

bitter; even the lukewarm grew furious. Then the two sieges overwhelmed

then with weariness; no progress was being made; a battle would be

better! Thus many men had left the ranks and were scouring the country.

But at news of the arming they returned; Matho leaped for joy. “At

last! at last!” he cried.

Then the resentment which he cherished against Salammbô was turned

against Hamilcar. His hate could now perceive a definite prey; and as

his vengeance grew easier of conception he almost believed that he

had realised it and he revelled in it already. At the same time he was

seized with a loftier tenderness, and consumed by more acrid desire.

He saw himself alternately in the midst of the soldiers brandishing the

Suffet’s head on a pike, and then in the room with the purple bed,

clasping the maiden in his arms, covering her face with kisses, passing

his hands over her long, black hair; and the imagination of this, which

he knew could never be realised, tortured him. He swore to himself that,

since his companions had appointed him schalishim, he would conduct the

war; the certainty that he would not return from it urged him to render

it a pitiless one.

He came to Spendius and said to him:

“You will go and get your men! I will bring mine! Warn Autaritus! We

are lost if Hamilcar attacks us! Do you understand me? Rise!”

Spendius was stupefied before such an air of authority. Matho usually

allowed himself to be led, and his previous transports had quickly

passed away. But just now he appeared at once calmer and more terrible;

a superb will gleamed in his eyes like the flame of sacrifice.

The Greek did not listen to his reasons. He was living in one of the

Carthaginian pearl-bordered tents, drinking cool beverages from silver

cups, playing at the cottabos, letting his hair grow, and conducting the

siege with slackness. Moreover, he had entered into communications with

some in the town and would not leave, being sure that it would open its

gates before many days were over.

Narr’ Havas, who wandered about among the three armies, was at that

time with him. He supported his opinion, and even blamed the Libyan for

wishing in his excess of courage to abandon their enterprise.

“Go, if you are afraid!” exclaimed Matho; “you promised us pitch,

sulphur, elephants, foot-soldiers, horses! where are they?”

Narr’ Havas reminded him that he had exterminated Hanno’s last

cohorts;—as to the elephants, they were being hunted in the woods,

he was arming the foot-soldiers, the horses were on their way; and the

Numidian rolled his eyes like a woman and smiled in an irritating manner

as he stroked the ostrich feather which fell upon his shoulder. In his

presence Matho was at a loss for a reply.

But a man who was a stranger entered, wet with perspiration, scared,

and with bleeding feet and loosened girdle; his breathing shook his

lean sides enough to have burst them, and speaking in an unintelligible

dialect he opened his eyes wide as if he were telling of some battle.

The king sprang outside and called his horsemen.

They ranged themselves in the plain before him in the form of a circle.

Narr’ Havas, who was mounted, bent his head and bit his lips. At last

he separated his men into two equal divisions, and told the first to

wait; then with an imperious gesture he carried off the others at a

gallop and disappeared on the horizon in the direction of the mountains.

“Master!” murmured Spendius, “I do not like these extraordinary

chances—the Suffet returning, Narr’ Havas going away—”

“Why! what does it matter?” said Matho disdainfully.

It was a reason the more for anticipating Hamilcar by uniting with

Autaritus. But if the siege of the towns were raised, the inhabitants

would come out and attack them in the rear, while they would have the

Carthaginians in front. After much talking the following measures were

resolved upon and immediately executed.

Spendius proceeded with fifteen thousand men as far as the bridge built

across the Macaras, three miles from Utica; the corners of it were

fortified with four huge towers provided with catapults; all the paths

and gorges in the mountains were stopped up with trunks of trees, pieces

of rock, interlacings of thorn, and stone walls; on the summits heaps

of grass were made which might be lighted as signals, and shepherds who

were able to see at a distance were posted at intervals.

No doubt Hamilcar would not, like Hanno, advance by the mountain of

the Hot Springs. He would think that Autaritus, being master of the

interior, would close the route against him. Moreover, a check at the

opening of the campaign would ruin him, while if he gained a victory he

would soon have to make a fresh beginning, the Mercenaries being further

off. Again, he could disembark at Cape Grapes and march thence upon one

of the towns. But he would then find himself between the two armies,

an indiscretion which he could not commit with his scanty forces.

Accordingly he must proceed along the base of Mount Ariana, then turn

to the left to avoid the mouths of the Macaras, and come straight to the

bridge. It was there that Matho expected him.

At night he used to inspect the pioneers by torch-light. He would hasten

to Hippo-Zarytus or to the works on the mountains, would come back

again, would never rest. Spendius envied his energy; but in the

management of spies, the choice of sentries, the working of the engines

and all means of defence, Matho listened docilely to his companion. They

spoke no more of Salammbô,—one not thinking about her, and the other

being prevented by a feeling of shame.

Often he would go towards Carthage, striving to catch sight of

Hamilcar’s troops. His eyes would dart along the horizon; he would

lie flat on the ground, and believe that he could hear an army in the

throbbing of his arteries.

He told Spendius that if Hamilcar did not arrive in three days he would

go with all his men to meet him and offer him battle. Two further days

elapsed. Spendius restrained him; but on the morning of the sixth day he

departed.

The Carthaginians were no less impatient for war than the Barbarians.

In tents and in houses there was the same longing and the same distress;

all were asking one another what was delaying Hamilcar.

From time to time he would mount to the cupola of the temple of Eschmoun

beside the Announcer of the Moons and take note of the wind.

One day—it was the third of the month of Tibby—they saw him

descending from the Acropolis with hurried steps. A great clamour arose

in the Mappalian district. Soon the streets were astir, and the soldiers

were everywhere beginning to arm themselves upon their breasts; then

they ran quickly to the square of Khamon to take their places in the

ranks. No one was allowed to follow them or even to speak to them, or to

approach the ramparts; for some minutes the whole town was silent as a

great tomb. The soldiers as they leaned on their lances were thinking,

and the others in the houses were sighing.

At sunset the army went out by the western gate; but instead of taking

the road to Tunis or making for the mountains in the direction of Utica,

they continued their march along the edge of the sea; and they soon

reached the Lagoon, where round spaces quite whitened with salt

glittered like gigantic silver dishes forgotten on the shore.

Then the pools of water multiplied. The ground gradually became softer,

and the feet sank in it. Hamilcar did not turn back. He went on still

at their head; and his horse, which was yellow-spotted like a dragon,

advanced into the mire flinging froth around him, and with great

straining of the loins. Night—a moonless light—fell. A few cried out

that they were about to perish; he snatched their arms from them, and

gave them to the serving-men. Nevertheless the mud became deeper and

deeper. Some had to mount the beasts of burden; others clung to the

horses’ tails; the sturdy pulled the weak, and the Ligurian corps

drove on the infantry with the points of their pikes. The darkness

increased. They had lost their way. All stopped.

Then some of the Suffet’s slaves went on ahead to look for the buoys

which had been placed at intervals by his order. They shouted through

the darkness, and the army followed them at a distance.

At last they felt the resistance of the ground. Then a whitish curve

became dimly visible, and they found themselves on the bank of the

Macaras. In spite of the cold no fires were lighted.

In the middle of the night squalls of wind arose. Hamilcar had the

soldiers roused, but not a trumpet was sounded: their captain tapped

them softly on the shoulder.

A man of lofty stature went down into the water. It did not come up to

his girdle; it was possible to cross.

The Suffet ordered thirty-two of the elephants to be posted in the river

a hundred paces further on, while the others, lower down, would check

the lines of men that were carried away by the current; and holding

their weapons above their heads they all crossed the Macaras as though

between two walls. He had noticed that the western wind had driven the

sand so as to obstruct the river and form a natural causeway across it.

He was now on the left bank in front of Utica, and in a vast plain, the

latter being advantageous for his elephants, which formed the strength

of his army.

This feat of genius filled the soldiers with enthusiasm. They recovered

extraordinary confidence. They wished to hasten immediately against the

Barbarians; but the Suffet bade them rest for two hours. As soon as the

sun appeared they moved into the plain in three lines—first came the

elephants, and then the light infantry with the cavalry behind it, the

phalanx marching next.

The Barbarians encamped at Utica, and the fifteen thousand about the

bridge were surprised to see the ground undulating in the distance. The

wind, which was blowing very hard, was driving tornadoes of sand before

it; they rose as though snatched from the soil, ascended in great

light-coloured strips, then parted asunder and began again, hiding the

Punic army the while from the Mercenaries. Owing to the horns, which

stood up on the edge of the helmets, some thought that they could

perceive a herd of oxen; others, deceived by the motion of the cloaks,

pretended that they could distinguish wings, and those who had travelled

a good deal shrugged their shoulders and explained everything by

the illusions of the mirage. Nevertheless something of enormous size

continued to advance. Little vapours, as subtle as the breath, ran

across the surface of the desert; the sun, which was higher now, shone

more strongly: a harsh light, which seemed to vibrate, threw back

the depths of the sky, and permeating objects, rendered distance

incalculable. The immense plain expanded in every direction beyond the

limits of vision; and the almost insensible undulations of the soil

extended to the extreme horizon, which was closed by a great blue line

which they knew to be the sea. The two armies, having left their tents,

stood gazing; the people of Utica were massing on the ramparts to have a

better view.

At last they distinguished several transverse bars bristling with level

points. They became thicker, larger; black hillocks swayed to and fro;

square thickets suddenly appeared; they were elephants and lances. A

single shout went up: “The Carthaginians!” and without signal or

command the soldiers at Utica and those at the bridge ran pell-mell to

fall in a body upon Hamilcar.

Spendius shuddered at the name. “Hamilcar! Hamilcar!” he repeated,

panting, and Matho was not there! What was to be done? No means of

flight! The suddenness of the event, his terror of the Suffet, and above

all, the urgent need of forming an immediate resolution, distracted him;

he could see himself pierced by a thousand swords, decapitated, dead.

Meanwhile he was being called for; thirty thousand men would follow him;

he was seized with fury against himself; he fell back upon the hope of

victory; it was full of bliss, and he believed himself more intrepid

than Epaminondas. He smeared his cheeks with vermilion in order to

conceal his paleness, then he buckled on his knemids and his cuirass,

swallowed a patera of pure wine, and ran after his troops, who were

hastening towards those from Utica.

They united so rapidly that the Suffet had not time to draw up his

men in battle array. By degrees he slackened his speed. The elephants

stopped; they rocked their heavy heads with their chargings of ostrich

feathers, striking their shoulders the while with their trunks.

Behind the intervals between them might be seen the cohorts of the

velites, and further on the great helmets of the Clinabarians,

with steel heads glancing in the sun, cuirasses, plumes, and waving

standards. But the Carthaginian army, which amounted to eleven thousand

three hundred and ninety-six men, seemed scarcely to contain them, for

it formed an oblong, narrow at the sides and pressed back upon itself.

Seeing them so weak, the Barbarians, who were thrice as numerous, were

seized with extravagant joy. Hamilcar was not to be seen. Perhaps he

had remained down yonder? Moreover what did it matter? The disdain

which they felt for these traders strengthened their courage; and

before Spendius could command a manouvre they had all understood it, and

already executed it.

They were deployed in a long, straight line, overlapping the wings of

the Punic army in order to completely encompass it. But when there

was an interval of only three hundred paces between the armies, the

elephants turned round instead of advancing; then the Clinabarians were

seen to face about and follow them; and the surprise of the Mercenaries

increased when they saw the archers running to join them. So the

Carthaginians were afraid, they were fleeing! A tremendous hooting broke

out from among the Barbarian troops, and Spendius exclaimed from the top

of his dromedary: “Ah! I knew it! Forward! forward!”

Then javelins, darts, and sling-bullets burst forth simultaneously. The

elephants feeling their croups stung by the arrows began to gallop more

quickly; a great dust enveloped them, and they vanished like shadows in

a cloud.

But from the distance there came a loud noise of footsteps dominated by

the shrill sound of the trumpets, which were being blown furiously.

The space which the Barbarians had in front of them, which was full

of eddies and tumult, attracted like a whirlpool; some dashed into it.

Cohorts of infantry appeared; they closed up; and at the same time

all the rest saw the foot-soldiers hastening up with the horseman at a

gallop.

Hamilcar had, in fact, ordered the phalanx to break its sections, and

the elephants, light troops, and cavalry to pass through the intervals

so as to bring themselves speedily upon the wings, and so well had he

calculated the distance from the Barbarians, that at the moment when

they reached him, the entire Carthaginian army formed one long straight

line.

In the centre bristled the phalanx, formed of syntagmata or full squares

having sixteen men on each side. All the leaders of all the files

appeared amid long, sharp lanceheads, which jutted out unevenly around

them, for the first six ranks crossed their sarissæ, holding them in

the middle, and the ten lower ranks rested them upon the shoulders of

their companions in succession before them. Their faces were all half

hidden beneath the visors of their helmets; their right legs were all

covered with bronze knemids; broad cylindrical shields reached down to

their knees; and the horrible quadrangular mass moved in a single body,

and seemed to live like an animal and work like a machine. Two cohorts

of elephants flanked it in regular array; quivering, they shook off the

splinters of the arrows that clung to their black skins. The Indians,

squatting on their withers among the tufts of white feathers, restrained

them with their spoon-headed harpoons, while the men in the towers, who

were hidden up to their shoulders, moved about iron distaffs furnished

with lighted tow on the edges of their large bended bows. Right and

left of the elephants hovered the slingers, each with a sling around his

loins, a second on his head, and a third in his right hand. Then came

the Clinabarians, each flanked by a Negro, and pointing their lances

between the ears of their horses, which, like themselves, were

completely covered with gold. Afterwards, at intervals, came the light

armed soldiers with shields of lynx skin, beyond which projected the

points of the javelins which they held in their left hands; while

the Tarentines, each having two coupled horses, relieved this wall of

soldiers at its two extremities.

The army of the Barbarians, on the contrary, had not been able to

preserve its line. Undulations and blanks were to be found through

its extravagant length; all were panting and out of breath with their

running.

The phalanx moved heavily along with thrusts from all its sarissæ;

and the too slender line of the Mercenaries soon yielded in the centre

beneath the enormous weight.

Then the Carthaginian wings expanded in order to fall upon them, the

elephants following. The phalanx, with obliquely pointed lances, cut

through the Barbarians; there were two enormous, struggling bodies; and

the wings with slings and arrows beat them back upon the phalangites.

There was no cavalry to get rid of them, except two hundred Numidians

operating against the right squadron of the Clinabarians. All the rest

were hemmed in, and unable to extricate themselves from the lines. The

peril was imminent, and the need of coming to some resolution urgent.

Spendius ordered attacks to be made simultaneously on both flanks of the

phalanx so as to pass clean through it. But the narrower ranks glided

below the longer ones and recovered their position, and the phalanx

turned upon the Barbarians as terrible in flank as it had just been in

front.

They struck at the staves of the sarissæ, but the cavalry in the rear

embarrassed their attack; and the phalanx, supported by the elephants,

lengthened and contracted, presenting itself in the form of a square,

a cone, a rhombus, a trapezium, a pyramid. A twofold internal movement

went on continually from its head to its rear; for those who were at

the lowest part of the files hastened up to the first ranks, while the

latter, from fatigue, or on account of the wounded, fell further back.

The Barbarians found themselves thronged upon the phalanx. It was

impossible for it to advance; there was, as it were, an ocean wherein

leaped red crests and scales of brass, while the bright shields rolled

like silver foam. Sometimes broad currents would descend from one

extremity to the other, and then go up again, while a heavy mass

remained motionless in the centre. The lances dipped and rose

alternately. Elsewhere there was so quick a play of naked swords that

only the points were visible, while turmæ of cavalry formed wide

circles which closed again like whirlwinds behind them.

Above the voices of the captains, the ringing of clarions and the

grating of tyres, bullets of lead and almonds of clay whistled through

the air, dashing the sword from the hand or the brain out of the skull.

The wounded, sheltering themselves with one arm beneath their shields,

pointed their swords by resting the pommels on the ground, while others,

lying in pools of blood, would turn and bite the heels of those above

them. The multitude was so compact, the dust so thick, and the tumult

so great that it was impossible to distinguish anything; the cowards who

offered to surrender were not even heard. Those whose hands were empty

clasped one another close; breasts cracked against cuirasses, and

corpses hung with head thrown back between a pair of contracted arms.

There was a company of sixty Umbrians who, firm on their hams, their

pikes before their eyes, immovable and grinding their teeth, forced two

syntagmata to recoil simultaneously. Some Epirote shepherds ran upon the

left squadron of the Clinabarians, and whirling their staves, seized the

horses by the man; the animals threw their riders and fled across the

plain. The Punic slingers scattered here and there stood gaping. The

phalanx began to waver, the captains ran to and fro in distraction,

the rearmost in the files were pressing upon the soldiers, and the

Barbarians had re-formed; they were recovering; the victory was theirs.

But a cry, a terrible cry broke forth, a roar of pain and wrath: it came

from the seventy-two elephants which were rushing on in double line,

Hamilcar having waited until the Mercenaries were massed together in

one spot to let them loose against them; the Indians had goaded them so

vigorously that blood was trickling down their broad ears. Their trunks,

which were smeared with minium, were stretched straight out in the air

like red serpents; their breasts were furnished with spears and their

backs with cuirasses; their tusks were lengthened with steel blades

curved like sabres,—and to make them more ferocious they had been

intoxicated with a mixture of pepper, wine, and incense. They shook

their necklaces of bells, and shrieked; and the elephantarchs bent their

heads beneath the stream of phalaricas which was beginning to fly from

the tops of the towers.

In order to resist them the better the Barbarians rushed forward in

a compact crowd; the elephants flung themselves impetuously upon the

centre of it. The spurs on their breasts, like ships’ prows, clove

through the cohorts, which flowed surging back. They stifled the men

with their trunks, or else snatching them up from the ground delivered

them over their heads to the soldiers in the towers; with their tusks

they disembowelled them, and hurled them into the air, and long entrails

hung from their ivory fangs like bundles of rope from a mast. The

Barbarians strove to blind them, to hamstring them; others would slip

beneath their bodies, bury a sword in them up to the hilt, and perish

crushed to death; the most intrepid clung to their straps; they would go

on sawing the leather amid flames, bullets, and arrows, and the wicker

tower would fall like a tower of stone. Fourteen of the animals on the

extreme right, irritated by their wounds, turned upon the second rank;

the Indians seized mallet and chisel, applied the latter to a joint in

the head, and with all their might struck a great blow.

Down fell the huge beasts, falling one above another. It was like

a mountain; and upon the heap of dead bodies and armour a monstrous

elephant, called “The Fury of Baal,” which had been caught by the

leg in some chains, stood howling until the evening with an arrow in its

eye.

The others, however, like conquerors, delighting in extermination,

overthrew, crushed, stamped, and raged against the corpses and the

débris. To repel the maniples in serried circles around them, they

turned about on their hind feet as they advanced, with a continual

rotatory motion. The Carthaginians felt their energy increase, and the

battle begin again.

The Barbarians were growing weak; some Greek hoplites threw away all

their arms, and terror seized upon the rest. Spendius was seen stooping

upon his dromedary, and spurring it on the shoulders with two javelins.

Then they all rushed away from the wings and ran towards Utica.

The Clinabarians, whose horses were exhausted, did not try to overtake

them. The Ligurians, who were weakened by thirst, cried out for an

advance towards the river. But the Carthaginians, who were posted in the

centre of the syntagmata, and had suffered less, stamped their feet

with longing for the vengeance which was flying from them; and they

were already darting forward in pursuit of the Mercenaries when Hamilcar

appeared.

He held in his spotted and sweat-covered horse with silver reins. The

bands fastened to the horns on his helmet flapped in the wind behind

him, and he had placed his oval shield beneath his left thigh. With a

motion of his triple-pointed pike he checked the army.

The Tarentines leaped quickly upon their spare horses, and set off right

and left towards the river and towards the town.

The phalanx exterminated all the remaining Barbarians at leisure. When

the swords appeared they would stretch out their throats and close their

eyelids. Others defended themselves to the last, and were knocked down

from a distance with flints like mad dogs. Hamilcar had desired the

taking of prisoners, but the Carthaginians obeyed him grudgingly, so

much pleasure did they derive from plunging their swords into the bodies

of the Barbarians. As they were too hot they set about their work with

bare arms like mowers; and when they desisted to take breath they would

follow with their eyes a horseman galloping across the country after a

fleeing soldier. He would succeed in seizing him by the hair, hold him

thus for a while, and then fell him with a blow of his axe.

Night fell. Carthaginians and Barbarians had disappeared. The elephants

which had taken to flight roamed in the horizon with their fired towers.

These burned here and there in the darkness like beacons nearly half

lost in the mist; and no movement could be discerned in the plain save

the undulation of the river, which was heaped with corpses, and was

drifting them away to the sea.

Two hours afterwards Matho arrived. He caught sight in the starlight of

long, uneven heaps lying upon the ground.

They were files of Barbarians. He stooped down; all were dead. He called

into the distance, but no voice replied.

That very morning he had left Hippo-Zarytus with his soldiers to march

upon Carthage. At Utica the army under Spendius had just set out, and

the inhabitants were beginning to fire the engines. All had fought

desperately. But, the tumult which was going on in the direction of

the bridge increasing in an incomprehensible fashion, Matho had struck

across the mountain by the shortest road, and as the Barbarians were

fleeing over the plain he had encountered nobody.

Facing him were little pyramidal masses rearing themselves in the shade,

and on this side of the river and closer to him were motionless lights

on the surface of the ground. In fact the Carthaginians had fallen

back behind the bridge, and to deceive the Barbarians the Suffet had

stationed numerous posts upon the other bank.

Matho, still advancing, thought that he could distinguish Punic engines,

for horses’ heads which did not stir appeared in the air fixed upon

the tops of piles of staves which could not be seen; and further off he

could hear a great clamour, a noise of songs, and clashing of cups.

Then, not knowing where he was nor how to find Spendius, assailed with

anguish, scared, and lost in the darkness, he returned more impetuously

by the same road. The dawn as growing grey when from the top of

the mountain he perceived the town with the carcases of the engines

blackened by the flames and looking like giant skeletons leaning against

the walls.

All was peaceful amid extraordinary silence and heaviness. Among his

soldiers on the verge of the tents men were sleeping nearly naked, each

upon his back, or with his forehead against his arm which was supported

by his cuirass. Some were unwinding bloodstained bandages from their

legs. Those who were doomed to die rolled their heads about gently;

others dragged themselves along and brought them drink. The sentries

walked up and down along the narrow paths in order to warm themselves,

or stood in a fierce attitude with their faces turned towards the

horizon, and their pikes on their shoulders. Matho found Spendius

sheltered beneath a rag of canvas, supported by two sticks set in the

ground, his knee in his hands and his head cast down.

They remained for a long time without speaking.

At last Matho murmured: “Conquered!”

Spendius rejoined in a gloomy voice: “Yes, conquered!”

And to all questions he replied by gestures of despair.

Meanwhile sighs and death-rattles reached them. Matho partially opened

the canvas. Then the sight of the soldiers reminded him of another

disaster on the same spot, and he ground his teeth: “Wretch! once

already—”

Spendius interrupted him: “You were not there either.”

“It is a curse!” exclaimed Matho. “Nevertheless, in the end I

will get at him! I will conquer him! I will slay him! Ah! if I had been

there!—” The thought of having missed the battle rendered him even

more desperate than the defeat. He snatched up his sword and threw it

upon the ground. “But how did the Carthaginians beat you?”

The former slave began to describe the manouvres. Matho seemed to

see them, and he grew angry. The army from Utica ought to have taken

Hamilcar in the rear instead of hastening to the bridge.

“Ah! I know!” said Spendius.

“You ought to have made your ranks twice as deep, avoided exposing the

velites against the phalanx, and given free passage to the elephants.

Everything might have been recovered at the last moment; there was no

necessity to fly.”

Spendius replied:

“I saw him pass along in his large red cloak, with uplifted arms

and higher than the dust, like an eagle flying upon the flank of the

cohorts; and at every nod they closed up or darted forward; the throng

carried us towards each other; he looked at me, and I felt the cold

steel as it were in my heart.”

“He selected the day, perhaps?” whispered Matho to himself.

They questioned each other, trying to discover what it was that had

brought the Suffet just when circumstances were most unfavourable.

They went on to talk over the situation, and Spendius, to extenuate his

fault, or to revive his courage, asserted that some hope still remained.

“And if there be none, it matters not!” said Matho; “alone, I will

carry on the war!”

“And I too!” exclaimed the Greek, leaping up; he strode to and fro,

his eyes sparkling, and a strange smile wrinkled his jackal face.

“We will make a fresh start; do not leave me again! I am not made for

battles in the sunlight—the flashing of swords troubles my sight; it

is a disease, I lived too long in the ergastulum. But give me walls to

scale at night, and I will enter the citadels, and the corpses shall be

cold before cock-crow! Show me any one, anything, an enemy, a treasure,

a woman,—a woman,” he repeated, “were she a king’s daughter,

and I will quickly bring your desire to your feet. You reproach me for

having lost the battle against Hanno, nevertheless I won it back

again. Confess it! my herd of swine did more for us than a phalanx of

Spartans.” And yielding to the need that he felt of exalting himself

and taking his revenge, he enumerated all that he had done for the cause

of the Mercenaries. “It was I who urged on the Gaul in the Suffet’s

gardens! And later, at Sicca, I maddened them all with fear of the

Republic! Gisco was sending them back, but I prevented the interpreters

speaking. Ah! how their tongues hung out of their mouths! do you

remember? I brought you into Carthage; I stole the zaïmph. I led you to

her. I will do more yet: you shall see!” He burst out laughing like a

madman.

Matho regarded him with gaping eyes. He felt in a measure uncomfortable

in the presence of this man, who was at once so cowardly and so

terrible.

The Greek resumed in jovial tones and cracking his fingers:

“Evoe! Sun after rain! I have worked in the quarries, and I have

drunk Massic wine beneath a golden awning in a vessel of my own like a

Ptolemæus. Calamity should help to make us cleverer. By dint of work we

may make fortune bend. She loves politicians. She will yield!”

He returned to Matho and took him by the arm.

“Master, at present the Carthaginians are sure of their victory. You

have quite an army which has not fought, and your men obey you. Place

them in the front: mine will follow to avenge themselves. I have still

three thousand Carians, twelve hundred slingers and archers, whole

cohorts! A phalanx even might be formed; let us return!”

Matho, who had been stunned by the disaster, had hitherto thought of

no means of repairing it. He listened with open mouth, and the bronze

plates which circled his sides rose with the leapings of his heart. He

picked up his sword, crying:

“Follow me; forward!”

But when the scouts returned, they announced that the Carthaginian dead

had been carried off, that the bridge was in ruins, and that Hamilcar

had disappeared.

CHAPTER IX IN THE FIELD

Hamilcar had thought that the Mercenaries would await him at Utica, or

that they would return against him; and finding his forces insufficient

to make or to sustain an attack, he had struck southwards along the

right bank of the river, thus protecting himself immediately from a

surprise.

He intended first to wink at the revolt of the tribes and to detach them

all from the cause of the Barbarians; then when they were quite isolated

in the midst of the provinces he would fall upon them and exterminate

them.

In fourteen days he pacified the region comprised between Thouccaber

and Utica, with the towns of Tignicabah, Tessourah, Vacca, and others

further to the west. Zounghar built in the mountains, Assoura celebrated

for its temple, Djeraado fertile in junipers, Thapitis, and Hagour

sent embassies to him. The country people came with their hands full of

provisions, implored his protection, kissed his feet and those of the

soldiers, and complained of the Barbarians. Some came to offer him bags

containing heads of Mercenaries killed, so they said, by themselves, but

which they had cut off corpses; for many had lost themselves in their

flight, and were found dead here and there beneath the olive trees and

among the vines.

On the morrow of his victory, Hamilcar, to dazzle the people, had sent

to Carthage the two thousand captives taken on the battlefield. They

arrived in long companies of one hundred men each, all with their arms

fastened behind their backs with a bar of bronze which caught them at

the nape of the neck, and the wounded, bleeding as they still were,

running also along; horsemen followed them, driving them on with blows

of the whip.

Then there was a delirium of joy! People repeated that there were six

thousand Barbarians killed; the others would not hold out, and the war

was finished; they embraced one another in the streets, and rubbed

the faces of the Patæc Gods with butter and cinnamomum to thank them.

These, with their big eyes, their big bodies, and their arms raised as

high as the shoulder, seemed to live beneath their freshened paint, and

to participate in the cheerfulness of the people. The rich left their

doors open; the city resounded with the noise of the timbrels; the

temples were illuminated every night, and the servants of the goddess

went down to Malqua and set up stages of sycamore-wood at the corners

of the cross-ways, and prostituted themselves there. Lands were voted to

the conquerors, holocausts to Melkarth, three hundred gold crowns to the

Suffet, and his partisans proposed to decree to him new prerogatives and

honours.

He had begged the Ancients to make overtures to Autaritus for exchanging

all the Barbarians, if necessary, for the aged Gisco, and the other

Carthaginians detained like him. The Libyans and Nomads composing the

army under Autaritus knew scarcely anything of these Mercenaries, who

were men of Italiote or Greek race; and the offer by the Republic of so

many Barbarians for so few Carthaginians, showed that the value of the

former was nothing and that of the latter considerable. They dreaded a

snare. Autaritus refused.

Then the Ancients decreed the execution of the captives, although the

Suffet had written to them not to put them to death. He reckoned

upon incorporating the best of them with his own troops and of thus

instigating defections. But hatred swept away all circumspection.

The two thousand Barbarians were tied to the stelæ of the tombs in

the Mappalian quarter; and traders, scullions, embroiderers, and even

women,—the widows of the dead with their children—all who would,

came to kill them with arrows. They aimed slowly at them, the better to

prolong their torture, lowering the weapon and then raising it in turn;

and the multitude pressed forward howling. Paralytics had themselves

brought thither in hand-barrows; many took the precaution of bringing

their food, and remained on the spot until the evening; others passed

the night there. Tents had been set up in which drinking went on. Many

gained large sums by hiring out bows.

Then all these crucified corpses were left upright, looking like so many

red statues on the tombs, and the excitement even spread to the people

of Malqua, who were the descendants of the aboriginal families, and were

usually indifferent to the affairs of their country. Out of gratitude

for the pleasure it had been giving them they now interested themselves

in its fortunes, and felt that they were Carthaginians, and the Ancients

thought it a clever thing to have thus blended the entire people in a

single act of vengeance.

The sanction of the gods was not wanting; for crows alighted from all

quarters of the sky. They wheeled in the air as they flew with loud

hoarse cries, and formed a huge cloud rolling continually upon itself.

It was seen from Clypea, Rhades, and the promontory of Hermæum.

Sometimes it would suddenly burst asunder, its black spirals extending

far away, as an eagle clove the centre of it, and then departed again;

here and there on the terraces the domes, the peaks of the obelisks,

and the pediments of the temples there were big birds holding human

fragments in their reddened beaks.

Owing to the smell the Carthaginians resigned themselves to unbind the

corpses. A few of them were burnt; the rest were thrown into the sea,

and the waves, driven by the north wind, deposited them on the shore at

the end of the gulf before the camp of Autaritus.

This punishment had no doubt terrified the Barbarians, for from the top

of Eschmoun they could be seen striking their tents, collecting their

flocks, and hoisting their baggage upon asses, and on the evening of the

same day the entire army withdrew.

It was to march to and fro between the mountain of the Hot Springs

and Hippo-Zarytus, and so debar the Suffet from approaching the Tyrian

towns, and from the possibility of a return to Carthage.

Meanwhile the two other armies were to try to overtake him in the south,

Spendius in the east, and Matho in the west, in such a way that all

three should unite to surprise and entangle him. Then they received a

reinforcement which they had not looked for: Narr’ Havas appeared with

three hundred camels laden with bitumen, twenty-five elephants, and six

thousand horsemen.

To weaken the Mercenaries the Suffet had judged it prudent to occupy his

attention at a distance in his own kingdom. From the heart of Carthage

he had come to an understanding with Masgaba, a Gætulian brigand

who was seeking to found an empire. Strengthened by Punic money, the

adventurer had raised the Numidian States with promises of freedom.

But Narr’ Havas, warned by his nurse’s son, had dropped into Cirta,

poisoned the conquerors with the water of the cisterns, struck off a few

heads, set all right again, and had just arrived against the Suffet more

furious than the Barbarians.

The chiefs of the four armies concerted the arrangements for the war. It

would be a long one, and everything must be foreseen.

It was agreed first to entreat the assistance of the Romans, and

this mission was offered to Spendius, but as a fugitive he dared not

undertake it. Twelve men from the Greek colonies embarked at Annaba in

a sloop belonging to the Numidians. Then the chiefs exacted an oath

of complete obedience from all the Barbarians. Every day the captains

inspected clothes and boots; the sentries were even forbidden to use a

shield, for they would often lean it against their lance and fall

asleep as they stood; those who had any baggage trailing after them

were obliged to get rid of it; everything was to be carried, in Roman

fashion, on the back. As a precaution against the elephants Matho

instituted a corps of cataphract cavalry, men and horses being hidden

beneath cuirasses of hippopotamus skin bristling with nails; and to

protect the horses’ hoofs boots of plaited esparto-grass were made for

them.

It was forbidden to pillage the villages, or to tyrannise over the

inhabitants who were not of Punic race. But as the country was becoming

exhausted, Matho ordered the provisions to be served out to the soldiers

individually, without troubling about the women. At first the men shared

with them. Many grew weak for lack of food. It was the occasion of many

quarrels and invectives, many drawing away the companions of the rest

by the bait or even by the promise of their own portion. Matho commanded

them all to be driven away pitilessly. They took refuge in the camp

of Autaritus; but the Gaulish and Libyan women forced them by their

outrageous treatment to depart.

At last they came beneath the walls of Carthage to implore the

protection of Ceres and Proserpine, for in Byrsa there was a temple

with priests consecrated to these goddesses in expiation of the horrors

formerly committed at the siege of Syracuse. The Syssitia, alleging

their right to waifs and strays, claimed the youngest in order to sell

them; and some fair Lacedæmonian women were taken by New Carthaginians

in marriage.

A few persisted in following the armies. They ran on the flank of the

syntagmata by the side of the captains. They called to their husbands,

pulled them by the cloak, cursed them as they beat their breasts, and

held out their little naked and weeping children at arm’s length. The

sight of them was unmanning the Barbarians; they were an embarrassment

and a peril. Several times they were repulsed, but they came back again;

Matho made the horsemen belonging to Narr’ Havas charge them with the

point of the lance; and on some Balearians shouting out to him that they

must have women, he replied: “I have none!”

Just now he was invaded by the genius of Moloch. In spite of the

rebellion of his conscience, he performed terrible deeds, imagining that

he was thus obeying the voice of a god. When he could not ravage the

fields, Matho would cast stones into them to render them sterile.

He urged Autaritus and Spendius with repeated messages to make haste.

But the Suffet’s operations were incomprehensible. He encamped at

Eidous, Monchar, and Tehent successively; some scouts believed that they

saw him in the neighbourhood of Ischiil, near the frontiers of Narr’

Havas, and it was reported that he had crossed the river above Tebourba

as though to return to Carthage. Scarcely was he in one place when he

removed to another. The routes that he followed always remained unknown.

The Suffet preserved his advantages without offering battle, and while

pursued by the Barbarians seemed to be leading them.

These marches and counter marches were still more fatiguing to the

Carthaginians, and Hamilcar’s forces, receiving no reinforcements,

diminished from day to day. The country people were now more backward

in bringing him provisions. In every direction he encountered taciturn

hesitation and hatred; and in spite of his entreaties to the Great

Council no succour came from Carthage.

It was said, perhaps it was believed, that he had need of none. It was

a trick, or his complaints were unnecessary; and Hanno’s partisans, in

order to do him an ill turn, exaggerated the importance of his victory.

The troops which he commanded he was welcome to; but they were not

going to supply his demands continually in that way. The war was quite

burdensome enough! it had cost too much, and from pride the patricians

belonging to his faction supported him but slackly.

Then Hamilcar, despairing of the Republic, took by force from the tribes

all that he wanted for the war—grain, oil, wood, cattle, and men.

But the inhabitants were not long in taking flight. The villages passed

through were empty, and the cabins were ransacked without anything being

discerned in them. The Punic army was soon encompassed by a terrible

solitude.

The Carthaginians, who were furious, began to sack the provinces; they

filled up the cisterns and fired the houses. The sparks, being carried

by the wind, were scattered far off, and whole forests were on fire on

the mountains; they bordered the valleys with a crown of flames, and

it was often necessary to wait in order to pass beyond them. Then the

soldiers resumed their march over the warm ashes in the full glare of

the sun.

Sometimes they would see what looked like the eyes of a tiger cat

gleaming in a bush by the side of the road. This was a Barbarian

crouching upon his heels, and smeared with dust, that he might not be

distinguished from the colour of the foliage; or perhaps when passing

along a ravine those on the wings would suddenly hear the rolling of

stones, and raising their eyes would perceive a bare-footed man bounding

along through the openings of the gorge.

Meanwhile Utica and Hippo-Zarytus were free since the Mercenaries

were no longer besieging them. Hamilcar commanded them to come to his

assistance. But not caring to compromise themselves, they answered him

with vague words, with compliments and excuses.

He went up again abruptly into the North, determined to open up one of

the Tyrian towns, though he were obliged to lay siege to it. He required

a station on the coast, so as to be able to draw supplies and men from

the islands or from Cyrene, and he coveted the harbour of Utica as being

the nearest to Carthage.

The Suffet therefore left Zouitin and turned the lake of Hippo-Zarytus

with circumspection. But he was soon obliged to lengthen out his

regiments into column in order to climb the mountain which separates

the two valleys. They were descending at sunset into its hollow,

funnel-shaped summit, when they perceived on the level of the ground

before them bronze she-wolves which seemed to be running across the

grass.

Suddenly large plumes arose and a terrible song burst forth, accompanied

by the rhythm of flutes. It was the army under Spendius; for some

Campanians and Greeks, in their execration of Carthage, had assumed the

ensigns of Rome. At the same time long pikes, shields of leopard’s

skin, linen cuirasses, and naked shoulders were seen on the left.

These were the Iberians under Matho, the Lusitanians, Balearians, and

Gætulians; the horses of Narr’ Havas were heard to neigh; they

spread around the hill; then came the loose rabble commanded by

Autaritus—Gauls, Libyans, and Nomads; while the Eaters of Uncleanness

might be recognised among them by the fish bones which they wore in

their hair.

Thus the Barbarians, having contrived their marches with exactness, had

come together again. But themselves surprised, they remained motionless

for some minutes in consultation.

The Suffet had collected his men into an orbicular mass, in such a way

as to offer an equal resistance in every direction. The infantry were

surrounded by their tall, pointed shields fixed close to one another in

the turf. The Clinabarians were outside and the elephants at intervals

further off. The Mercenaries were worn out with fatigue; it was better

to wait till next day; and the Barbarians feeling sure of their victory

occupied themselves the whole night in eating.

They lighted large bright fires, which, while dazzling themselves, left

the Punic army below them in the shade. Hamilcar caused a trench fifteen

feet broad and ten cubits deep to be dug in Roman fashion round his

camp, and the earth thrown out to be raised on the inside into a

parapet, on which sharp interlacing stakes were planted; and at sunrise

the Mercenaries were amazed to perceive all the Carthaginians thus

entrenched as if in a fortress.

They could recognise Hamilcar in the midst of the tents walking about

and giving orders. His person was clad in a brown cuirass cut in little

scales; he was followed by his horse, and stopped from time to time to

point out something with his right arm outstretched.

Then more than one recalled similar mornings when, amid the din of

clarions, he passed slowly before them, and his looks strengthened

them like cups of wine. A kind of emotion overcame them. Those, on the

contrary, who were not acquainted with Hamilcar, were mad with joy at

having caught him.

Nevertheless if all attacked at once they would do one another mutual

injury in the insufficiency of space. The Numidians might dash through;

but the Clinabarians, who were protected by cuirasses, would crush them.

And then how were the palisades to be crossed? As to the elephants, they

were not sufficiently well trained.

“You are all cowards!” exclaimed Matho.

And with the best among them he rushed against the entrenchment. They

were repulsed by a volley of stones; for the Suffet had taken their

abandoned catapults on the bridge.

This want of success produced an abrupt change in the fickle minds

of the Barbarians. Their extreme bravery disappeared; they wished to

conquer, but with the smallest possible risk. According to Spendius they

ought to maintain carefully the position that they held, and starve out

the Punic army. But the Carthaginians began to dig wells, and as there

were mountains surrounding the hill, they discovered water.

From the summit of their palisade they launched arrows, earth, dung,

and pebbles which they gathered from the ground, while the six catapults

rolled incessantly throughout the length of the terrace.

But the springs would dry up of themselves; the provisions would be

exhausted, and the catapults worn out; the Mercenaries, who were

ten times as numerous, would triumph in the end. The Suffet devised

negotiations so as to gain time, and one morning the Barbarians found

a sheep’s skin covered with writing within their lines. He justified

himself for his victory: the Ancients had forced him into the war, and

to show them that he was keeping his word, he offered them the pillaging

of Utica or Hippo-Zarytus at their choice; in conclusion, Hamilcar

declared that he did not fear them because he had won over some

traitors, and thanks to them would easily manage the rest.

The Barbarians were disturbed: this proposal of immediate booty made

them consider; they were apprehensive of treachery, not suspecting

a snare in the Suffet’s boasting, and they began to look upon one

another with mistrust. Words and steps were watched; terrors awaked

them in the night. Many forsook their companions and chose their army as

fancy dictated, and the Gauls with Autaritus went and joined themselves

with the men of Cisalpine Gaul, whose language they understood.

The four chiefs met together every evening in Matho’s tent, and

squatting round a shield, attentively moved backwards and forwards the

little wooden figures invented by Pyrrhus for the representation of

manouvres. Spendius would demonstrate Hamilcar’s resources, and with

oaths by all the gods entreat that the opportunity should not be wasted.

Matho would walk about angry and gesticulating. The war against Carthage

was his own personal affair; he was indignant that the others should

interfere in it without being willing to obey him. Autaritus would

divine his speech from his countenance and applaud. Narr’ Havas would

elevate his chin to mark his disdain; there was not a measure he did not

consider fatal; and he had ceased to smile. Sighs would escape him as

though he were thrusting back sorrow for an impossible dream, despair

for an abortive enterprise.

While the Barbarians deliberated in uncertainty, the Suffet increased

his defences: he had a second trench dug within the palisades, a second

wall raised, and wooden towers constructed at the corners; and his

slaves went as far as the middle of the outposts to drive caltrops into

the ground. But the elephants, whose allowances were lessened, struggled

in their shackles. To economise the grass he ordered the Clinabarians to

kill the least strong among the stallions. A few refused to do so, and

he had them decapitated. The horses were eaten. The recollection of

this fresh meat was a source of great sadness to them in the days that

followed.

From the bottom of the ampitheatre in which they were confined they

could see the four bustling camps of the Barbarians all around them on

the heights. Women moved about with leathern bottles on their heads,

goats strayed bleating beneath the piles of pikes; sentries were being

relieved, and eating was going on around tripods. In fact, the tribes

furnished them abundantly with provisions, and they did not themselves

suspect how much their inaction alarmed the Punic army.

On the second day the Carthaginians had remarked a troop of three

hundred men apart from the rest in the camp of the nomads. These were

the rich who had been kept prisoners since the beginning of the war.

Some Libyans ranged them along the edge of the trench, took their

station behind them, and hurled javelins, making themselves a rampart

of their bodies. The wretched creatures could scarcely be recognised,

so completely were their faces covered with vermin and filth. Their hair

had been plucked out in places, leaving bare the ulcers on their

heads, and they were so lean and hideous that they were like mummies in

tattered shrouds. A few trembled and sobbed with a stupid look; the rest

cried out to their friends to fire upon the Barbarians. There was one

who remained quite motionless with face cast down, and without

speaking; his long white beard fell to his chain-covered hands; and the

Carthaginians, feeling as it were the downfall of the Republic in the

bottom of their hearts, recognised Gisco. Although the place was a

dangerous one they pressed forward to see him. On his head had been

placed a grotesque tiara of hippopotamus leather incrusted with pebbles.

It was Autaritus’s idea; but it was displeasing to Matho.

Hamilcar in exasperation, and resolved to cut his way through in one way

or another, had the palisades opened; and the Carthaginians went at a

furious rate half way up the hill or three hundred paces. Such a flood

of Barbarians descended upon them that they were driven back to their

lines. One of the guards of the Legion who had remained outside was

stumbling among the stones. Zarxas ran up to him, knocked him down, and

plunged a dagger into his throat; he drew it out, threw himself upon the

wound—and gluing his lips to it with mutterings of joy, and startings

which shook him to the heels, pumped up the blood by breastfuls; then he

quietly sat down upon the corpse, raised his face with his neck thrown

back the better to breathe in the air, like a hind that has just drunk

at a mountain stream, and in a shrill voice began to sing a Balearic

song, a vague melody full of prolonged modulations, with interruptions

and alternations like echoes answering one another in the mountains; he

called upon his dead brothers and invited them to a feast;—then he let

his hands fall between his legs, slowly bent his head, and wept. This

atrocious occurrence horrified the Barbarians, especially the Greeks.

From that time forth the Carthaginians did not attempt to make any

sally; and they had no thought of surrender, certain as they were that

they would perish in tortures.

Nevertheless the provisions, in spite of Hamilcar’s carefulness,

diminished frightfully. There was not left per man more than ten

k’hommers of wheat, three hins of millet, and twelve betzas of dried

fruit. No more meat, no more oil, no more salt food, and not a grain of

barley for the horses, which might be seen stretching down their wasted

necks seeking in the dust for blades of trampled straw. Often the

sentries on vedette upon the terrace would see in the moonlight a dog

belonging to the Barbarians coming to prowl beneath the entrenchment

among the heaps of filth; it would be knocked down with a stone, and

then, after a descent had been effected along the palisades by means

of the straps of a shield, it would be eaten without a word. Sometimes

horrible barkings would be heard and the man would not come up again.

Three phalangites, in the fourth dilochia of the twelfth syntagmata,

killed one another with knives in a dispute about a rat.

All regretted their families, and their houses; the poor their

hive-shaped huts, with the shells on the threshold and the hanging net,

and the patricians their large halls filled with bluish shadows, where

at the most indolent hour of the day they used to rest listening to the

vague noise of the streets mingled with the rustling of the leaves as

they stirred in their gardens;—to go deeper into the thought of this,

and to enjoy it more, they would half close their eyelids, only to be

roused by the shock of a wound. Every minute there was some engagement,

some fresh alarm; the towers were burning, the Eaters of Uncleanness

were leaping across the palisades; their hands would be struck off with

axes; others would hasten up; an iron hail would fall upon the tents.

Galleries of rushen hurdles were raised as a protection against the

projectiles. The Carthaginians shut themselves up within them and

stirred out no more.

Every day the sun coming over the hill used, after the early hours, to

forsake the bottom of the gorge and leave them in the shade. The grey

slopes of the ground, covered with flints spotted with scanty lichen,

ascended in front and in the rear, and above their summits stretched the

sky in its perpetual purity, smoother and colder to the eye than a metal

cupola. Hamilcar was so indignant with Carthage that he felt inclined to

throw himself among the Barbarians and lead them against her. Moreover,

the porters, sutlers, and slaves were beginning to murmur, while neither

people, nor Great Council, nor any one sent as much as a hope. The

situation was intolerable, especially owing to the thought that it would

become worse.

At the news of the disaster Carthage had leaped, as it were, with anger

and hate; the Suffet would have been less execrated if he had allowed

himself to be conquered from the first.

But time and money were lacking for the hire of other Mercenaries. As to

a levy of soldiers in the town, how were they to be equipped? Hamilcar

had taken all the arms! and then who was to command them? The best

captains were down yonder with him! Meanwhile, some men despatched by

the Suffet arrived in the streets with shouts. The Great Council were

roused by them, and contrived to make them disappear.

It was an unnecessary precaution; every one accused Barca of having

behaved with slackness. He ought to have annihilated the Mercenaries

after his victory. Why had he ravaged the tribes? The sacrifices

already imposed had been heavy enough! and the patricians deplored their

contributions of fourteen shekels, and the Syssitia their two hundred

and twenty-three thousand gold kikars; those who had given nothing

lamented like the rest. The populace was jealous of the New

Carthaginians, to whom he had promised full rights of citizenship;

and even the Ligurians, who had fought with such intrepidity, were

confounded with the Barbarians and cursed like them; their race became

a crime, the proof of complicity. The traders on the threshold of their

shops, the workmen passing plumb-line in hand, the vendors of pickle

rinsing their baskets, the attendants in the vapour baths and the

retailers of hot drinks all discussed the operations of the campaign.

They would trace battle-plans with their fingers in the dust, and

there was not a sorry rascal to be found who could not have corrected

Hamilcar’s mistakes.

It was a punishment, said the priests, for his long-continued impiety.

He had offered no holocausts; he had not purified his troops; he had

even refused to take augurs with him; and the scandal of sacrilege

strengthened the violence of restrained hate, and the rage of betrayed

hopes. People recalled the Sicilian disasters, and all the burden of

his pride that they had borne for so long! The colleges of the pontiffs

could not forgive him for having seized their treasure, and they

demanded a pledge from the Great Council to crucify him should he ever

return.

The heats of the month of Eloul, which were excessive in that year, were

another calamity. Sickening smells rose from the borders of the Lake,

and were wafted through the air together with the fumes of the aromatics

that eddied at the corners of the streets. The sounds of hymns were

constantly heard. Crowds of people occupied the staircases of the

temples; all the walls were covered with black veils; tapers burnt

on the brows of the Patæc Gods, and the blood of camels slain for

sacrifice ran along the flights of stairs forming red cascades upon the

steps. Carthage was agitated with funereal delirium. From the depths of

the narrowest lanes, and the blackest dens, there issued pale faces,

men with viper-like profiles and grinding their teeth. The houses were

filled with the women’s piercing shrieks, which, escaping through the

gratings, caused those who stood talking in the squares to turn round.

Sometimes it was thought that the Barbarians were arriving; they had

been seen behind the mountain of the Hot Springs; they were encamped at

Tunis; and the voices would multiply and swell, and be blended into one

single clamour. Then universal silence would reign, some remaining where

they had climbed upon the frontals of the buildings, screening their

eyes with their open hand, while the rest lay flat on their faces at the

foot of the ramparts straining their ears. When their terror had passed

off their anger would begin again. But the conviction of their own

impotence would soon sink them into the same sadness as before.

It increased every evening when all ascended the terraces, and bowing

down nine times uttered a loud cry in salutation of the sun, as it

sank slowly behind the lagoon, and then suddenly disappeared among the

mountains in the direction of the Barbarians.

They were waiting for the thrice holy festival when, from the summit

of a funeral pile, an eagle flew heavenwards as a symbol of the

resurrection of the year, and a message from the people to their Baal;

they regarded it as a sort of union, a method of connecting themselves

with the might of the Sun. Moreover, filled as they now were with

hatred, they turned frankly towards homicidal Moloch, and all forsook

Tanith. In fact, Rabetna, having lost her veil, was as if she had been

despoiled of part of her virtue. She denied the beneficence of her

waters, she had abandoned Carthage; she was a deserter, an enemy.

Some threw stones at her to insult her. But many pitied her while they

inveighed against her; she was still beloved, and perhaps more deeply

than she had been.

All their misfortunes came, therefore, from the loss of the zaïmph.

Salammbô had indirectly participated in it; she was included in the

same ill will; she must be punished. A vague idea of immolation spread

among the people. To appease the Baalim it was without doubt necessary

to offer them something of incalculable worth, a being handsome, young,

virgin, of old family, a descendant of the gods, a human star. Every day

the gardens of Megara were invaded by strange men; the slaves, trembling

on their own account, dared not resist them. Nevertheless, they did not

pass beyond the galley staircase. They remained below with their eyes

raised to the highest terrace; they were waiting for Salammbô, and they

would cry out for hours against her like dogs baying at the moon.

CHAPTER X THE SERPENT

These clamourings of the populace did not alarm Hamilcar’s daughter.

She was disturbed by loftier anxieties: her great serpent, the black

python, was drooping; and in the eyes of the Carthaginians, the serpent

was at once a national and a private fetish. It was believed to be the

offspring of the dust of the earth, since it emerges from its depths and

has no need of feet to traverse it; its mode of progression called to

mind the undulations of rivers, its temperature the ancient, viscous,

and fecund darkness, and the orbit which it describes when biting its

tail the harmony of the planets, and the intelligence of Eschmoun.

Salammbô’s serpent had several times already refused the four live

sparrows which were offered to it at the full moon and at every new

moon. Its handsome skin, covered like the firmament with golden spots

upon a perfectly black ground, was now yellow, relaxed, wrinkled, and

too large for its body. A cottony mouldiness extended round its head;

and in the corners of its eyelids might be seen little red specks which

appeared to move. Salammbô would approach its silver-wire basket

from time to time, and would draw aside the purple curtains, the lotus

leaves, and the bird’s down; but it was continually rolled up upon

itself, more motionless than a withered bind-weed; and from looking at

it she at last came to feel a kind of spiral within her heart, another

serpent, as it were, mounting up to her throat by degrees and strangling

her.

She was in despair of having seen the zaïmph, and yet she felt a sort

of joy, an intimate pride at having done so. A mystery shrank within the

splendour of its folds; it was the cloud that enveloped the gods, and

the secret of the universal existence, and Salammbô, horror-stricken at

herself, regretted that she had not raised it.

She was almost always crouching at the back of her apartment, holding

her bended left leg in her hands, her mouth half open, her chin sunk,

her eye fixed. She recollected her father’s face with terror; she

wished to go away into the mountains of Phonicia, on a pilgrimage to

the temple of Aphaka, where Tanith descended in the form of a star;

all kinds of imaginings attracted her and terrified her; moreover, a

solitude which every day became greater encompassed her. She did not

even know what Hamilcar was about.

Wearied at last with her thoughts she would rise, and trailing along

her little sandals whose soles clacked upon her heels at every step, she

would walk at random through the large silent room. The amethysts and

topazes of the ceiling made luminous spots quiver here and there, and

Salammbô as she walked would turn her head a little to see them. She

would go and take the hanging amphoras by the neck; she would cool

her bosom beneath the broad fans, or perhaps amuse herself by burning

cinnamomum in hollow pearls. At sunset Taanach would draw back the black

felt lozenges that closed the openings in the wall; then her doves,

rubbed with musk like the doves of Tanith, suddenly entered, and their

pink feet glided over the glass pavement, amid the grains of barley

which she threw to them in handfuls like a sower in a field. But on a

sudden she would burst into sobs and lie stretched on the large bed of

ox-leather straps without moving, repeating a word that was ever the

same, with open eyes, pale as one dead, insensible, cold; and yet she

could hear the cries of the apes in the tufts of the palm trees, with

the continuous grinding of the great wheel which brought a flow of pure

water through the stories into the porphyry centre-basin.

Sometimes for several days she would refuse to eat. She could see in

a dream troubled stars wandering beneath her feet. She would call

Schahabarim, and when he came she had nothing to say to him.

She could not live without the relief of his presence. But she rebelled

inwardly against this domination; her feeling towards the priest was one

at once of terror, jealousy, hatred, and a species of love, in gratitude

for the singular voluptuousness which she experienced by his side.

He had recognised the influence of Rabbet, being skilful to discern

the gods who send diseases; and to cure Salammbô he had her apartment

watered with lotions of vervain, and maidenhair; she ate mandrakes every

morning; she slept with her head on a cushion filled with aromatics

blended by the pontiffs; he had even employed baaras, a fiery-coloured

root which drives back fatal geniuses into the North; lastly, turning

towards the polar star, he murmured thrice the mysterious name of

Tanith; but Salammbô still suffered and her anguish deepened.

No one in Carthage was so learned as he. In his youth he had studied at

the College of the Mogbeds, at Borsippa, near Babylon; had then visited

Samothrace, Pessinus, Ephesus, Thessaly, Judæa, and the temples of the

Nabathæ, which are lost in the sands; and had travelled on foot along

the banks of the Nile from the cataracts to the sea. Shaking torches

with veil-covered face, he had cast a black cock upon a fire of

sandarach before the breast of the Sphinx, the Father of Terror. He had

descended into the caverns of Proserpine; he had seen the five hundred

pillars of the labyrinth of Lemnos revolve, and the candelabrum of

Tarentum, which bore as many sconces on its shaft as there are days in

the year, shine in its splendour; at times he received Greeks by night

in order to question them. The constitution of the world disquieted him

no less than the nature of the gods; he had observed the equinoxes with

the armils placed in the portico of Alexandria, and accompanied the

bematists of Evergetes, who measure the sky by calculating the number

of their steps, as far as Cyrene; so that there was now growing in his

thoughts a religion of his own, with no distinct formula, and on that

very account full of infatuation and fervour. He no longer believed that

the earth was formed like a fir-cone; he believed it to be round, and

eternally falling through immensity with such prodigious speed that its

fall was not perceived.

From the position of the sun above the moon he inferred the predominance

of Baal, of whom the planet itself is but the reflection and figure;

moreover, all that he saw in terrestrial things compelled him to

recognise the male exterminating principle as supreme. And then he

secretly charged Rabbet with the misfortune of his life. Was it not for

her that the grand-pontiff had once advanced amid the tumult of cymbals,

and with a patera of boiling water taken from him his future virility?

And he followed with a melancholy gaze the men who were disappearing

with the priestesses in the depths of the turpentine trees.

His days were spent in inspecting the censers, the gold vases, the

tongs, the rakes for the ashes of the altar, and all the robes of the

statues down to the bronze bodkin that served to curl the hair of an old

Tanith in the third aedicule near the emerald vine. At the same hours he

would raise the great hangings of the same swinging doors; would remain

with his arms outspread in the same attitude; or prayed prostrate on the

same flag-stones, while around him a people of priests moved barefooted

through the passages filled with an eternal twilight.

But Salammbô was in the barrenness of his life like a flower in the

cleft of a sepulchre. Nevertheless he was hard upon her, and spared

her neither penances nor bitter words. His condition established, as it

were, the equality of a common sex between them, and he was less angry

with the girl for his inability to possess her than for finding her so

beautiful, and above all so pure. Often he saw that she grew weary of

following his thought. Then he would turn away sadder than before; he

would feel himself more forsaken, more empty, more alone.

Strange words escaped him sometimes, which passed before Salammbô like

broad lightnings illuminating the abysses. This would be at night on the

terrace when, both alone, they gazed upon the stars, and Carthage spread

below under their feet, with the gulf and the open sea dimly lost in the

colour of the darkness.

He would set forth to her the theory of the souls that descend upon

the earth, following the same route as the sun through the signs of the

zodiac. With outstretched arm he showed the gate of human generation in

the Ram, and that of the return to the gods in Capricorn; and Salammbô

strove to see them, for she took these conceptions for realities;

she accepted pure symbols and even manners of speech as being true in

themselves, a distinction not always very clear even to the priest.

“The souls of the dead,” said he, “resolve themselves into

the moon, as their bodies do into the earth. Their tears compose its

humidity; ’tis a dark abode full of mire, and wreck, and tempest.”

She asked what would become of her then.

“At first you will languish as light as a vapour hovering upon the

waves; and after more lengthened ordeals and agonies, you will pass into

the forces of the sun, the very source of Intelligence!”

He did not speak, however, of Rabbet. Salammbô imagined that it was

through some shame for his vanquished goddess, and calling her by a

common name which designated the moon, she launched into blessings upon

the soft and fertile planet. At last he exclaimed:

“No! no! she draws all her fecundity from the other! Do you not see

her hovering about him like an amorous woman running after a man in a

field?” And he exalted the virtue of light unceasingly.

Far from depressing her mystic desires, he sought, on the contrary,

to excite them, and he even seemed to take joy in grieving her by the

revelation of a pitiless doctrine. In spite of the pains of her love

Salammbô threw herself upon it with transport.

But the more that Schahabarim felt himself in doubt about Tanith, the

more he wished to believe in her. At the bottom of his soul he was

arrested by remorse. He needed some proof, some manifestation from the

gods, and in the hope of obtaining it the priest devised an enterprise

which might save at once his country and his belief.

Thenceforward he set himself to deplore before Salammbô the sacrilege

and the misfortunes which resulted from it even in the regions of

the sky. Then he suddenly announced the peril of the Suffet, who was

assailed by three armies under the command of Matho—for on account of

the veil Matho was, in the eyes of the Carthaginians, the king, as it

were, of the Barbarians,—and he added that the safety of the Republic

and of her father depended upon her alone.

“Upon me!” she exclaimed. “How can I—?”

But the priest, with a smile of disdain said:

“You will never consent!”

She entreated him. At last Schahabarim said to her:

“You must go to the Barbarians and recover the zaïmph!”

She sank down upon the ebony stool, and remained with her arms stretched

out between her knees and shivering in all her limbs, like a victim

at the altar’s foot awaiting the blow of the club. Her temples were

ringing, she could see fiery circles revolving, and in her stupor

she had lost the understanding of all things save one, that she was

certainly going to die soon.

But if Rabbetna triumphed, if the zaïmph were restored and Carthage

delivered, what mattered a woman’s life? thought Schahabarim.

Moreover, she would perhaps obtain the veil and not perish.

He stayed away for three days; on the evening of the fourth she sent for

him.

The better to inflame her heart he reported to her all the invectives

howled against Hamilcar in open council; he told her that she had erred,

that she owed reparation for her crime, and that Rabbetna commanded the

sacrifice.

A great uproar came frequently across the Mappalian district to Megara.

Schahabarim and Salammbô went out quickly, and gazed from the top of

the galley staircase.

There were people in the square of Khamon shouting for arms. The

Ancients would not provide them, esteeming such an effort useless;

others who had set out without a general had been massacred. At last

they were permitted to depart, and as a sort of homage to Moloch, or

from a vague need of destruction, they tore up tall cypress trees in

the woods of the temples, and having kindled them at the torches of the

Kabiri, were carrying them through the streets singing. These monstrous

flames advanced swaying gently; they transmitted fires to the glass

balls on the crests of the temples, to the ornaments of the colossuses

and the beaks of the ships, passed beyond the terraces and formed suns

as it were, which rolled through the town. They descended the Acropolis.

The gate of Malqua opened.

“Are you ready?” exclaimed Schahabarim, “or have you asked them

to tell your father that you abandoned him?” She hid her face in her

veils, and the great lights retired, sinking gradually the while to the

edge of the waves.

An indeterminate dread restrained her; she was afraid of Moloch and of

Matho. This man, with his giant stature, who was master of the zaïmph,

ruled Rabbetna as much as did Baal, and seemed to her to be surrounded

by the same fulgurations; and then the souls of the gods sometimes

visited the bodies of men. Did not Schahabarim in speaking of him say

that she was to vanquish Moloch? They were mingled with each other; she

confused them together; both of them were pursuing her.

She wished to learn the future, and approached the serpent, for auguries

were drawn from the attitudes of serpents. But the basket was empty;

Salammbô was disturbed.

She found him with his tail rolled round one of the silver balustrades

beside the hanging bed, which he was rubbing in order to free himself

from his old yellowish skin, while his body stretched forth gleaming and

clear like a sword half out of the sheath.

Then on the days following, in proportion as she allowed herself to be

convinced, and was more disposed to succour Tanith, the python recovered

and grew; he seemed to be reviving.

The certainty that Salammbô was giving expression to the will of the

gods then became established in her conscience. One morning she awoke

resolved, and she asked what was necessary to make Matho restore the

veil.

“To claim it,” said Schahabarim.

“But if he refuses?” she rejoined.

The priest scanned her fixedly with a smile such as she had never seen.

“Yes, what is to be done?” repeated Salammbô.

He rolled between his fingers the extremities of the bands which fell

from his tiara upon his shoulders, standing motionless with eyes cast

down. At last seeing that she did not understand:

“You will be alone with him.”

“Well?” she said.

“Alone in his tent.”

“What then?”

Schahabarim bit his lips. He sought for some phrase, some

circumlocution.

“If you are to die, that will be later,” he said; “later! fear

nothing! and whatever he may undertake to do, do not call out! do not

be frightened! You will be humble, you understand, and submissive to his

desire, which is ordained of heaven!”

“But the veil?”

“The gods will take thought for it,” replied Schahabarim.

“Suppose you were to accompany me, O father?” she added.

“No!”

He made her kneel down, and keeping his left hand raised and his right

extended, he swore in her behalf to bring back the mantle of Tanith into

Carthage. With terrible imprecations she devoted herself to the gods,

and each time that Schahabarim pronounced a word she falteringly

repeated it.

He indicated to her all the purifications and fastings that she was to

observe, and how she was to reach Matho. Moreover, a man acquainted with

the routes would accompany her.

She felt as if she had been set free. She thought only of the happiness

of seeing the zaïmph again, and she now blessed Schahabarim for his

exhortations.

It was the period at which the doves of Carthage migrated to Sicily to

the mountain of Eryx and the temple of Venus. For several days before

their departure they sought out and called to one another so as to

collect together; at last one evening they flew away; the wind blew them

along, and the big white cloud glided across the sky high above the sea.

The horizon was filled with the colour of blood. They seemed to descend

gradually to the waves; then they disappeared as though swallowed up,

and falling of themselves into the jaws of the sun. Salammbô, who

watched them retiring, bent her head, and then Taanach, believing that

she guessed her sorrow, said gently to her:

“But they will come back, Mistress.”

“Yes! I know.”

“And you will see them again.”

“Perhaps!” she said, sighing.

She had not confided her resolve to any one; in order to carry it out

with the greater discretion she sent Taanach to the suburb of Kinisdo to

buy all the things that she required instead of requesting them from the

stewards: vermilion, aromatics, a linen girdle, and new garments. The

old slave was amazed at these preparations, without daring, however,

to ask any questions; and the day, which had been fixed by Schahabarim,

arrived when Salammbô was to set out.

About the twelfth hour she perceived, in the depths of the sycamore

trees, a blind old man with one hand resting on the shoulder of a child

who walked before him, while with the other he carried a kind of cithara

of black wood against his hip. The eunuchs, slaves, and women had

been scrupulously sent away; no one might know the mystery that was

preparing.

Taanach kindled four tripods filled with strobus and cardamomum in the

corners of the apartment; then she unfolded large Babylonian hangings,

and stretched them on cords all around the room, for Salammbô did not

wish to be seen even by the walls. The kinnor-player squatted behind

the door and the young boy standing upright applied a reed flute to

his lips. In the distance the roar of the streets was growing feebler,

violet shadows were lengthening before the peristyles of the temples,

and on the other side of the gulf the mountain bases, the fields of

olive-trees, and the vague yellow lands undulated indefinitely, and were

blended together in a bluish haze; not a sound was to be heard, and an

unspeakable depression weighed in the air.

Salammbô crouched down upon the onyx step on the edge of the basin; she

raised her ample sleeves, fastening them behind her shoulders, and began

her ablutions in methodical fashion, according to the sacred rites.

Next Taanach brought her something liquid and coagulated in an alabaster

phial; it was the blood of a black dog slaughtered by barren women on a

winter’s night amid the rubbish of a sepulchre. She rubbed it upon

her ears, her heels, and the thumb of her right hand, and even her nail

remained somewhat red, as if she had crushed a fruit.

The moon rose; then the cithara and the flute began to play together.

Salammbô unfastened her earrings, her necklace, her bracelets, and her

long white simar; she unknotted the band in her hair, shaking the latter

for a few minutes softly over her shoulders to cool herself by thus

scattering it. The music went on outside; it consisted of three notes

ever the same, hurried and frenzied; the strings grated, the flute blew;

Taanach kept time by striking her hands; Salammbô, with a swaying of

her whole body, chanted prayers, and her garments fell one after another

around her.

The heavy tapestry trembled, and the python’s head appeared above

the cord that supported it. The serpent descended slowly like a drop

of water flowing along a wall, crawled among the scattered stuffs, and

then, gluing its tail to the ground, rose perfectly erect; and his eyes,

more brilliant than carbuncles, darted upon Salammbô.

A horror of cold, or perhaps a feeling of shame, at first made her

hesitate. But she recalled Schahabarim’s orders and advanced; the

python turned downwards, and resting the centre of its body upon the

nape of her neck, allowed its head and tail to hang like a broken

necklace with both ends trailing to the ground. Salammbô rolled it

around her sides, under her arms and between her knees; then taking it

by the jaw she brought the little triangular mouth to the edge of her

teeth, and half shutting her eyes, threw herself back beneath the rays

of the moon. The white light seemed to envelop her in a silver mist, the

prints of her humid steps shone upon the flag-stones, stars quivered in

the depth of the water; it tightened upon her its black rings that were

spotted with scales of gold. Salammbô panted beneath the excessive

weight, her loins yielded, she felt herself dying, and with the tip

of its tail the serpent gently beat her thigh; then the music becoming

still it fell off again.

Taanach came back to her; and after arranging two candelabra, the lights

of which burned in crystal balls filled with water, she tinged the

inside of her hands with Lawsonia, spread vermilion upon her cheeks, and

antimony along the edge of her eyelids, and lengthened her eyebrows with

a mixture of gum, musk, ebony, and crushed legs of flies.

Salammbô seated on a chair with ivory uprights, gave herself up to the

attentions of the slave. But the touchings, the odour of the aromatics,

and the fasts that she had undergone, were enervating her. She became so

pale that Taanach stopped.

“Go on!” said Salammbô, and bearing up against herself, she

suddenly revived. Then she was seized with impatience; she urged Taanach

to make haste, and the old slave grumbled:

“Well! well! Mistress!—Besides, you have no one waiting for you!”

“Yes!” said Salammbô, “some one is waiting for me.”

Taanach drew back in surprise, and in order to learn more about it,

said:

“What orders to you give me, Mistress? for if you are to remain

away—”

But Salammbô was sobbing; the slave exclaimed:

“You are suffering! what is the matter? Do not go away! take me! When

you were quite little and used to cry, I took you to my heart and

made you laugh with the points of my breasts; you have drained them,

Mistress!” She struck herself upon her dried-up bosom. “Now I am

old! I can do nothing for you! you no longer love me! you hide your

griefs from me, you despise the nurse!” And tears of tenderness and

vexation flowed down her cheeks in the gashes of her tattooing.

“No!” said Salammbô, “no, I love you! be comforted!”

With a smile like the grimace of an old ape, Taanach resumed her task.

In accordance with Schahabarim’s recommendations, Salammbô had

ordered the slave to make her magnificent; and she was obeying her

mistress with barbaric taste full at once of refinement and ingenuity.

Over a first delicate and vinous-coloured tunic she passed a second

embroidered with birds’ feathers. Golden scales clung to her hips,

and from this broad girdle descended her blue flowing silver-starred

trousers. Next Taanach put upon her a long robe made of the cloth of the

country of Seres, white and streaked with green lines. On the edge of

her shoulder she fastened a square of purple weighted at the hem with

grains of sandastrum; and above all these garments she placed a black

mantle with a flowing train; then she gazed at her, and proud of her

work could not help saying:

“You will not be more beautiful on the day of your bridal!”

“My bridal!” repeated Salammbô; she was musing with her elbow

resting upon the ivory chair.

But Taanach set up before her a copper mirror, which was so broad and

high that she could see herself completely in it. Then she rose, and

with a light touch of her finger raised a lock of her hair which was

falling too low.

Her hair was covered with gold dust, was crisped in front, and hung down

behind over her back in long twists ending in pearls. The brightness

of the candelabra heightened the paint on her cheeks, the gold on her

garments, and the whiteness of her skin; around her waist, and on her

arms, hands and toes, she had such a wealth of gems that the mirror sent

back rays upon her like a sun;—and Salammbô, standing by the side of

Taanach, who leaned over to see her, smiled amid this dazzling display.

Then she walked to and fro embarrassed by the time that was still left.

Suddenly the crow of a cock resounded. She quickly pinned a long yellow

veil upon her hair, passed a scarf around her neck, thrust her feet into

blue leather boots, and said to Taanach:

“Go and see whether there is not a man with two horses beneath the

myrtles.”

Taanach had scarcely re-entered when she was descending the galley

staircase.

“Mistress!” cried the nurse.

Salammbô turned round with one finger on her mouth as a sign for

discretion and immobility.

Taanach stole softly along the prows to the foot of the terrace,

and from a distance she could distinguish by the light of the moon a

gigantic shadow walking obliquely in the cypress avenue to the left of

Salammbô, a sign which presaged death.

Taanach went up again into the chamber. She threw herself upon the

ground tearing her face with her nails; she plucked out her hair, and

uttered piercing shrieks with all her might.

It occurred to her that they might be heard; then she became silent,

sobbing quite softly with her head in the hands and her face on the

pavement.

CHAPTER XI IN THE TENT

The man who guided Salammbô made her ascend again beyond the pharos

in the direction of the Catacombs, and then go down the long suburb of

Molouya, which was full of steep lanes. The sky was beginning to grow

grey. Sometimes palm-wood beams jutting out from the walls obliged them

to bend their heads. The two horses which were at the walk would often

slip; and thus they reached the Teveste gate.

Its heavy leaves were half open; they passed through, and it closed

behind them.

At first they followed the foot of the ramparts for a time, and at the

height of the cisterns they took their way along the Tænia, a narrow

strip of yellow earth separating the gulf from the lake and extending as

far as Rhades.

No one was to be seen around Carthage, whether on the sea or in the

country. The slate-coloured waves chopped softly, and the light wind

blowing their foam hither and thither spotted them with white rents.

In spite of all her veils, Salammbô shivered in the freshness of the

morning; the motion and the open air dazed her. Then the sun rose; it

preyed on the back of her head, and she involuntarily dozed a little.

The two animals rambled along side by side, their feet sinking into the

silent sand.

When they had passed the mountain of the Hot Springs, they went on at a

more rapid rate, the ground being firmer.

But although it was the season for sowing and ploughing, the fields were

as empty as the desert as far as the eye could reach. Here and there

were scattered heaps of corn; at other places the barley was shedding

its reddened ears. The villages showed black upon the clear horizon,

with shapes incoherently carved.

From time to time a half-calcined piece of wall would be found standing

on the edge of the road. The roofs of the cottages were falling in, and

in the interiors might be distinguished fragments of pottery, rags of

clothing, and all kinds of unrecognisable utensils and broken things.

Often a creature clothed in tatters, with earthy face and flaming eyes

would emerge from these ruins. But he would very quickly begin to run or

would disappear into a hole. Salammbô and her guide did not stop.

Deserted plains succeeded one another. Charcoal dust which was raised by

their feet behind them, stretched in unequal trails over large spaces

of perfectly white soil. Sometimes they came upon little peaceful spots,

where a brook flowed amid the long grass; and as they ascended the other

bank Salammbô would pluck damp leaves to cool her hands. At the corner

of a wood of rose-bays her horse shied violently at the corpse of a man

which lay extended on the ground.

The slave immediately settled her again on the cushions. He was one of

the servants of the Temple, a man whom Schahabarim used to employ on

perilous missions.

With extreme precaution he now went on foot beside her and between the

horses; he would whip the animals with the end of a leathern lace wound

round his arm, or would perhaps take balls made of wheat, dates, and

yolks of eggs wrapped in lotus leaves from a scrip hanging against his

breast, and offer them to Salammbô without speaking, and running all

the time.

In the middle of the day three Barbarians clad in animals’ skins

crossed their path. By degrees others appeared wandering in troops of

ten, twelve, or twenty-five men; many were driving goats or a limping

cow. Their heavy sticks bristled with brass points; cutlasses gleamed

in their clothes, which were savagely dirty, and they opened their eyes

with a look of menace and amazement. As they passed some sent them

a vulgar benediction; others obscene jests, and Schahabarim’s man

replied to each in his own idiom. He told them that this was a sick

youth going to be cured at a distant temple.

However, the day was closing in. Barkings were heard, and they

approached them.

Then in the twilight they perceived an enclosure of dry stones shutting

in a rambling edifice. A dog was running along the top of the wall. The

slave threw some pebbles at him and they entered a lofty vaulted hall.

A woman was crouching in the centre warming herself at a fire of

brushwood, the smoke of which escaped through the holes in the ceiling.

She was half hidden by her white hair which fell to her knees; and

unwilling to answer, she muttered with idiotic look words of vengeance

against the Barbarians and the Carthaginians.

The runner ferreted right and left. Then he returned to her and demanded

something to eat. The old woman shook her head, and murmured with her

eyes fixed upon the charcoal:

“I was the hand. The ten fingers are cut off. The mouth eats no

more.”

The slave showed her a handful of gold pieces. She rushed upon them, but

soon resumed her immobility.

At last he placed a dagger which he had in his girdle beneath her

throat. Then, trembling, she went and raised a large stone, and brought

back an amphora of wine with fish from Hippo-Zarytus preserved in honey.

Salammbô turned away from this unclean food, and fell asleep on the

horses’ caparisons which were spread in a corner of the hall.

He awoke her before daylight.

The dog was howling. The slave went up to it quietly, and struck off

its head with a single blow of his dagger. Then he rubbed the horses’

nostrils with blood to revive them. The old woman cast a malediction at

him from behind. Salammbô perceived this, and pressed the amulet which

she wore above her heart.

They resumed their journey.

From time to time she asked whether they would not arrive soon. The road

undulated over little hills. Nothing was to be heard but the grating of

the grasshoppers. The sun heated the yellowed grass; the ground was all

chinked with crevices which in dividing formed, as it were, monstrous

paving-stones. Sometimes a viper passed, or eagles flew by; the slave

still continued running. Salammbô mused beneath her veils, and in spite

of the heat did not lay them aside through fear of soiling her beautiful

garments.

At regular distances stood towers built by the Carthaginians for the

purpose of keeping watch upon the tribes. They entered these for the

sake of the shade, and then set out again.

For prudence sake they had made a wide detour the day before. But they

met with no one just now; the region being a sterile one, the Barbarians

had not passed that way.

Gradually the devastation began again. Sometimes a piece of mosaic would

be displayed in the centre of a field, the sole remnant of a vanished

mansion; and the leafless olive trees looked at a distance like large

bushes of thorns. They passed through a town in which houses were burnt

to the ground. Human skeletons might be seen along the walls. There were

some, too, of dromedaries and mules. Half-gnawed carrion blocked the

streets.

Night fell. The sky was lowering and cloudy.

They ascended again for two hours in a westerly direction, when suddenly

they perceived a quantity of little flames before them.

These were shining at the bottom of an ampitheatre. Gold plates, as they

displaced one another, glanced here and there. These were the cuirasses

of the Clinabarians in the Punic camp; then in the neighbourhood they

distinguished other and more numerous lights, for the armies of the

Mercenaries, now blended together, extended over a great space.

Salammbô made a movement as though to advance. But Schahabarim’s

man took her further away, and they passed along by the terrace which

enclosed the camp of the Barbarians. A breach became visible in it, and

the slave disappeared.

A sentry was walking upon the top of the entrenchment with a bow in his

hand and a pike on his shoulder.

Salammbô drew still nearer; the Barbarian knelt and a long arrow

pierced the hem of her cloak. Then as she stood motionless and

shrieking, he asked her what she wanted.

“To speak to Matho,” she replied. “I am a fugitive from

Carthage.”

He gave a whistle, which was repeated at intervals further away.

Salammbô waited; her frightened horse moved round and round, sniffing.

When Matho arrived the moon was rising behind her. But she had a yellow

veil with black flowers over her face, and so many draperies about her

person, that it was impossible to make any guess about her. From the top

of the terrace he gazed upon this vague form standing up like a phantom

in the penumbræ of the evening.

At last she said to him:

“Lead me to your tent! I wish it!”

A recollection which he could not define passed through his memory. He

felt his heart beating. The air of command intimidated him.

“Follow me!” he said.

The barrier was lowered, and immediately she was in the camp of the

Barbarians.

It was filled with a great tumult and a great throng. Bright fires were

burning beneath hanging pots; and their purpled reflections illuminating

some places left others completely in the dark. There was shouting and

calling; shackled horses formed long straight lines amid the tents; the

latter were round and square, of leather or of canvas; there were huts

of reeds, and holes in the sand such as are made by dogs. Soldiers were

carting faggots, resting on their elbows on the ground, or wrapping

themselves up in mats and preparing to sleep; and Salammbô’s horse

sometimes stretched out a leg and jumped in order to pass over them.

She remembered that she had seen them before; but their beards were

longer now, their faces still blacker, and their voices hoarser. Matho,

who walked before her, waved them off with a gesture of his arm which

raised his red mantle. Some kissed his hands; others bending their

spines approached him to ask for orders, for he was now veritable and

sole chief of the Barbarians; Spendius, Autaritus, and Narr’ Havas had

become disheartened, and he had displayed so much audacity and obstinacy

that all obeyed him.

Salammbô followed him through the entire camp. His tent was at the end,

three hundred feet from Hamilcar’s entrenchments.

She noticed a wide pit on the right, and it seemed to her that faces

were resting against the edge of it on a level with the ground, as

decapitated heads might have done. However, their eyes moved, and from

these half-opened mouths groanings escaped in the Punic tongue.

Two Negroes holding resin lights stood on both sides of the door. Matho

drew the canvas abruptly aside. She followed him.

It was a deep tent with a pole standing up in the centre. It was lighted

by a large lamp-holder shaped like a lotus and full of a yellow oil

wherein floated handfuls of burning tow, and military things might be

distinguished gleaming in the shade. A naked sword leaned against a

stool by the side of a shield; whips of hippopotamus leather,

cymbals, bells, and necklaces were displayed pell-mell on baskets of

esparto-grass; a felt rug lay soiled with crumbs of black bread; some

copper money was carelessly heaped upon a round stone in a corner, and

through the rents in the canvas the wind brought the dust from without,

together with the smell of the elephants, which might be heard eating

and shaking their chains.

“Who are you?” said Matho.

She looked slowly around her without replying; then her eyes were

arrested in the background, where something bluish and sparkling fell

upon a bed of palm-branches.

She advanced quickly. A cry escaped her. Matho stamped his foot behind

her.

“Who brings you here? why do you come?”

“To take it!” she replied, pointing to the zaïmph, and with the

other hand she tore the veils from her head. He drew back with his

elbows behind him, gaping, almost terrified.

She felt as if she were leaning on the might of the gods; and looking at

him face to face she asked him for the zaïmph; she demanded it in words

abundant and superb.

Matho did not hear; he was gazing at her, and in his eyes her garments

were blended with her body. The clouding of the stuffs, like the

splendour of her skin, was something special and belonging to her alone.

Her eyes and her diamonds sparkled; the polish of her nails continued

the delicacy of the stones which loaded her fingers; the two clasps of

her tunic raised her breasts somewhat and brought them closer together,

and he in thought lost himself in the narrow interval between them

whence there fell a thread holding a plate of emeralds which could be

seen lower down beneath the violet gauze. She had as earrings two little

sapphire scales, each supporting a hollow pearl filled with liquid

scent. A little drop would fall every moment through the holes in the

pearl and moisten her naked shoulder. Matho watched it fall.

He was carried away by ungovernable curiosity; and, like a child laying

his hand upon a strange fruit, he tremblingly and lightly touched

the top of her chest with the tip of his finger: the flesh, which was

somewhat cold, yielded with an elastic resistance.

This contact, though scarcely a sensible one, shook Matho to the very

depths of his nature. An uprising of his whole being urged him towards

her. He would fain have enveloped her, absorbed her, drunk her. His

bosom was panting, his teeth were chattering.

Taking her by the wrists he drew her gently to him, and then sat

down upon a cuirass beside the palm-tree bed which was covered with a

lion’s skin. She was standing. He looked up at her, holding her thus

between his knees, and repeating:

“How beautiful you are! how beautiful you are!”

His eyes, which were continually fixed upon hers, pained her; and the

uncomfortableness, the repugnance increased in so acute a fashion that

Salammbô put a constraint upon herself not to cry out. The thought of

Schahabarim came back to her, and she resigned herself.

Matho still kept her little hands in his own; and from time to time, in

spite of the priest’s command, she turned away her face and tried to

thrust him off by jerking her arms. He opened his nostrils the better

to breathe in the perfume which exhaled from her person. It was a fresh,

indefinable emanation, which nevertheless made him dizzy, like the smoke

from a perfuming-pan. She smelt of honey, pepper, incense, roses, with

another odour still.

But how was she thus with him in his tent, and at his disposal? Some one

no doubt had urged her. She had not come for the zaïmph. His arms fell,

and he bent his head whelmed in sudden reverie.

To soften him Salammbô said to him in a plaintive voice:

“What have I done to you that you should desire my death?”

“Your death!”

She resumed:

“I saw you one evening by the light of my burning gardens amid fuming

cups and my slaughtered slaves, and your anger was so strong that you

bounded towards me and I was obliged to fly! Then terror entered into

Carthage. There were cries of the devastation of the towns, the burning

of the country-seats, the massacre of the soldiery; it was you who had

ruined them, it was you who had murdered them! I hate you! Your very

name gnaws me like remorse! You are execrated more than the plague, and

the Roman war! The provinces shudder at your fury, the furrows are full

of corpses! I have followed the traces of your fires as though I were

travelling behind Moloch!”

Matho leaped up; his heart was swelling with colossal pride; he was

raised to the stature of a god.

With quivering nostrils and clenched teeth she went on:

“As if your sacrilege were not enough, you came to me in my sleep

covered with the zaïmph! Your words I did not understand; but I could

see that you wished to drag me to some terrible thing at the bottom of

an abyss.”

Matho, writhing his arms, exclaimed:

“No! no! it was to give it to you! to restore it to you! It seemed to

me that the goddess had left her garment for you, and that it belonged

to you! In her temple or in your house, what does it matter? are you not

all-powerful, immaculate, radiant and beautiful even as Tanith?” And

with a look of boundless adoration he added:

“Unless perhaps you are Tanith?”

“I, Tanith!” said Salammbô to herself.

They left off speaking. The thunder rolled in the distance. Some sheep

bleated, frightened by the storm.

“Oh! come near!” he went on, “come near! fear nothing!

“Formerly I was only a soldier mingled with the common herd of the

Mercenaries, ay, and so meek that I used to carry wood on my back for

the others. Do I trouble myself about Carthage! The crowd of its people

move as though lost in the dust of your sandals, and all its treasures,

with the provinces, fleets, and islands, do not raise my envy like the

freshness of your lips and the turn of your shoulders. But I wanted to

throw down its walls that I might reach you to possess you! Moreover,

I was revenging myself in the meantime! At present I crush men like

shells, and I throw myself upon phalanxes; I put aside the sarissæ with

my hands, I check the stallions by the nostrils; a catapult would

not kill me! Oh! if you knew how I think of you in the midst of war!

Sometimes the memory of a gesture or of a fold of your garment suddenly

seizes me and entwines me like a net! I perceive your eyes in the flames

of the phalaricas and on the gilding of the shields! I hear your voice

in the sounding of the cymbals. I turn aside, but you are not there! and

I plunge again into the battle!”

He raised his arms whereon his veins crossed one another like ivy on

the branches of a tree. Sweat flowed down his breast between his square

muscles; and his breathing shook his sides with his bronze girdle all

garnished with thongs hanging down to his knees, which were firmer than

marble. Salammbô, who was accustomed to eunuchs, yielded to amazement

at the strength of this man. It was the chastisement of the goddess or

the influence of Moloch in motion around her in the five armies. She was

overwhelmed with lassitude; and she listened in a state of stupor to the

intermittent shouts of the sentinels as they answered one another.

The flames of the lamp kindled in the squalls of hot air. There came

at times broad lightning flashes; then the darkness increased; and she

could only see Matho’s eyeballs like two coals in the night. However,

she felt that a fatality was surrounding her, that she had reached a

supreme and irrevocable moment, and making an effort she went up again

towards the zaïmph and raised her hands to seize it.

“What are you doing?” exclaimed Matho.

“I am going back to Carthage,” she placidly replied.

He advanced folding his arms and with so terrible a look that her heels

were immediately nailed, as it were, to the spot.

“Going back to Carthage!” He stammered, and, grinding his teeth,

repeated:

“Going back to Carthage! Ah! you came to take the zaïmph, to conquer

me, and then disappear! No, no! you belong to me! and no one now shall

tear you from here! Oh! I have not forgotten the insolence of your

large tranquil eyes, and how you crushed me with the haughtiness of your

beauty! ’Tis my turn now! You are my captive, my slave, my servant!

Call, if you like, on your father and his army, the Ancients, the

rich, and your whole accursed people! I am the master of three hundred

thousand soldiers! I will go and seek them in Lusitania, in the Gauls,

and in the depths of the desert, and I will overthrow your town and burn

all its temples; the triremes shall float on the waves of blood! I will

not have a house, a stone, or a palm tree remaining! And if men fail me

I will draw the bears from the mountains and urge on the lions! Seek not

to fly or I kill you!”

Pale and with clenched fists he quivered like a harp whose strings are

about to burst. Suddenly sobs stifled him, and he sank down upon his

hams.

“Ah! forgive me! I am a scoundrel, and viler than scorpions, than mire

and dust! Just now while you were speaking your breath passed across my

face, and I rejoiced like a dying man who drinks lying flat on the edge

of a stream. Crush me, if only I feel your feet! curse me, if only I

hear your voice! Do not go! have pity! I love you! I love you!”

He was on his knees on the ground before her; and he encircled her form

with both his arms, his head thrown back, and his hands wandering; the

gold discs hanging from his ears gleamed upon his bronzed neck; big

tears rolled in his eyes like silver globes; he sighed caressingly, and

murmured vague words lighter than a breeze and sweet as a kiss.

Salammbô was invaded by a weakness in which she lost all consciousness

of herself. Something at once inward and lofty, a command from the gods,

obliged her to yield herself; clouds uplifted her, and she fell back

swooning upon the bed amid the lion’s hair. The zaïmph fell, and

enveloped her; she could see Matho’s face bending down above her

breast.

“Moloch, thou burnest me!” and the soldier’s kisses, more

devouring than flames, covered her; she was as though swept away in a

hurricane, taken in the might of the sun.

He kissed all her fingers, her arms, her feet, and the long tresses of

her hair from one end to the other.

“Carry it off,” he said, “what do I care? take me away with it!

I abandon the army! I renounce everything! Beyond Gades, twenty days’

journey into the sea, you come to an island covered with gold dust,

verdure, and birds. On the mountains large flowers filled with smoking

perfumes rock like eternal censers; in the citron trees, which are

higher than cedars, milk-coloured serpents cause the fruit to fall upon

the turf with the diamonds in their jaws; the air is so mild that it

keeps you from dying. Oh! I shall find it, you will see. We shall live

in crystal grottoes cut out at the foot of the hills. No one dwells in

it yet, or I shall become the king of the country.”

He brushed the dust off her cothurni; he wanted her to put a quarter of

a pomegranate between her lips; he heaped up garments behind her head to

make a cushion for her. He sought for means to serve her, and to humble

himself, and he even spread the zaïmph over her feet as if it were a

mere rug.

“Have you still,” he said, “those little gazelle’s horns on

which your necklaces hang? You will give them to me! I love them!” For

he spoke as if the war were finished, and joyful laughs broke from him.

The Mercenaries, Hamilcar, every obstacle had now disappeared. The moon

was gliding between two clouds. They could see it through an opening in

the tent. “Ah, what nights have I spent gazing at her! she seemed to

me like a veil that hid your face; you would look at me through her;

the memory of you was mingled with her beams; then I could no longer

distinguish you!” And with his head between her breasts he wept

copiously.

“And this,” she thought, “is the formidable man who makes Carthage

tremble!”

He fell asleep. Then disengaging herself from his arm she put one foot

to the ground, and she perceived that her chainlet was broken.

The maidens of the great families were accustomed to respect these

shackles as something that was almost religious, and Salammbô,

blushing, rolled the two pieces of the golden chain around her ankles.

Carthage, Megara, her house, her room, and the country that she had

passed through, whirled in tumultuous yet distinct images through her

memory. But an abyss had yawned and thrown them far back to an infinite

distance from her.

The storm was departing; drops of water splashing rarely, one by one,

made the tent-roof shake.

Matho slept like a drunken man, stretched on his side, and with one arm

over the edge of the couch. His band of pearls was raised somewhat, and

uncovered his brow; his teeth were parted in a smile; they shone through

his black beard, and there was a silent and almost outrageous gaiety in

his half-closed eyelids.

Salammbô looked at him motionless, her head bent and her hands crossed.

A dagger was displayed on the table of cypress-wood at the head of the

bed; the sight of the gleaming blade fired her with a sanguinary desire.

Mournful voices lingered at a distance in the shade, and like a chorus

of geniuses urged her on. She approached it; she seized the steel by the

handle. At the rustling of her dress Matho half opened his eyes, putting

forth his mouth upon her hands, and the dagger fell.

Shouts arose; a terrible light flashed behind the canvas. Matho raised

the latter; they perceived the camp of the Libyans enveloped in great

flames.

Their reed huts were burning, and the twisting stems burst in the smoke

and flew off like arrows; black shadows ran about distractedly on the

red horizon. They could hear the shrieks of those who were in the

huts; the elephants, oxen, and horses plunged in the midst of the crowd

crushing it together with the stores and baggage that were being rescued

from the fire. Trumpets sounded. There were calls of “Matho! Matho!”

Some people at the door tried to get in.

“Come along! Hamilcar is burning the camp of Autaritus!”

He made a spring. She found herself quite alone.

Then she examined the zaïmph; and when she had viewed it well she was

surprised that she had not the happiness which she had once imagined to

herself. She stood with melancholy before her accomplished dream.

But the lower part of the tent was raised, and a monstrous form

appeared. Salammbô could at first distinguish only the two eyes and

a long white beard which hung down to the ground; for the rest of the

body, which was cumbered with the rags of a tawny garment, trailed along

the earth; and with every forward movement the hands passed into the

beard and then fell again. Crawling in this way it reached her feet, and

Salammbô recognised the aged Gisco.

In fact, the Mercenaries had broken the legs of the captive Ancients

with a brass bar to prevent them from taking to flight; and they were

all rotting pell-mell in a pit in the midst of filth. But the sturdiest

of them raised themselves and shouted when they heard the noise of

platters, and it was in this way that Gisco had seen Salammbô. He

had guessed that she was a Carthaginian woman by the little balls of

sandastrum flapping against her cothurni; and having a presentiment

of an important mystery he had succeeded, with the assistance of his

companions, in getting out of the pit; then with elbows and hands he had

dragged himself twenty paces further on as far as Matho’s tent. Two

voices were speaking within it. He had listened outside and had heard

everything.

“It is you!” she said at last, almost terrified.

“Yes, it is I!” he replied, raising himself on his wrists. “They

think me dead, do they not?”

She bent her head. He resumed:

“Ah! why have the Baals not granted me this mercy!” He approached

so close he was touching her. “They would have spared me the pain of

cursing you!”

Salammbô sprang quickly back, so much afraid was she of this unclean

being, who was as hideous as a larva and nearly as terrible as a

phantom.

“I am nearly one hundred years old,” he said. “I have seen

Agathocles; I have seen Regulus and the eagles of the Romans passing

over the harvests of the Punic fields! I have seen all the terrors of

battles and the sea encumbered with the wrecks of our fleets! Barbarians

whom I used to command have chained my four limbs like a slave that

has committed murder. My companions are dying around me, one after the

other; the odour of their corpses awakes me in the night; I drive away

the birds that come to peck out their eyes; and yet not for a single day

have I despaired of Carthage! Though I had seen all the armies of the

earth against her, and the flames of the siege overtop the height of the

temples, I should have still believed in her eternity! But now all is

over! all is lost! The gods execrate her! A curse upon you who have

quickened her ruin by your disgrace!”

She opened her lips.

“Ah! I was there!” he cried. “I heard you gurgling with love like

a prostitute; then he told you of his desire, and you allowed him to

kiss your hands! But if the frenzy of your unchastity urged you to

it, you should at least have done as do the fallow deer, which hide

themselves in their copulations, and not have displayed your shame

beneath your father’s very eyes!”

“What?” she said.

“Ah! you did not know that the two entrenchments are sixty cubits from

each other and that your Matho, in the excess of his pride, has posted

himself just in front of Hamilcar. Your father is there behind you; and

could I climb the path which leads to the platform, I should cry to him:

‘Come and see your daughter in the Barbarian’s arms! She has put on

the garment of the goddess to please him; and in yielding her body to

him she surrenders with the glory of your name the majesty of the gods,

the vengeance of her country, even the safety of Carthage!’” The

motion of his toothless mouth moved his beard throughout its length;

his eyes were riveted upon her and devoured her; panting in the dust he

repeated:

“Ah! sacrilegious one! May you be accursed! accursed! accursed!”

Salammbô had drawn back the canvas; she held it raised at arm’s

length, and without answering him she looked in the direction of

Hamilcar.

“It is this way, is it not?” she said.

“What matters it to you? Turn away! Begone! Rather crush your face

against the earth! It is a holy spot which would be polluted by your

gaze!”

She threw the zaïmph about her waist, and quickly picked up her veils,

mantle, and scarf. “I hasten thither!” she cried; and making her

escape Salammbô disappeared.

At first she walked through the darkness without meeting any one, for

all were betaking themselves to the fire; the uproar was increasing and

great flames purpled the sky behind; a long terrace stopped her.

She turned round to right and left at random, seeking for a ladder,

a rope, a stone, something in short to assist her. She was afraid of

Gisco, and it seemed to her that shouts and footsteps were pursuing her.

Day was beginning to break. She perceived a path in the thickness of the

entrenchment. She took the hem of her robe, which impeded her, in her

teeth, and in three bounds she was on the platform.

A sonorous shout burst forth beneath her in the shade, the same which

she had heard at the foot of the galley staircase, and leaning over she

recognised Schahabarim’s man with his coupled horses.

He had wandered all night between the two entrenchments; then disquieted

by the fire, he had gone back again trying to see what was passing in

Matho’s camp; and, knowing that this spot was nearest to his tent, he

had not stirred from it, in obedience to the priest’s command.

He stood up on one of the horses. Salammbô let herself slide down to

him; and they fled at full gallop, circling the Punic camp in search of

a gate.

Matho had re-entered his tent. The smoky lamp gave but little light, and

he also believed that Salammbô was asleep. Then he delicately touched

the lion’s skin on the palm-tree bed. He called but she did not

answer; he quickly tore away a strip of the canvas to let in some light;

the zaïmph was gone.

The earth trembled beneath thronging feet. Shouts, neighings, and

clashing of armour rose in the air, and clarion flourishes sounded

the charge. It was as though a hurricane were whirling around him.

Immoderate frenzy made him leap upon his arms, and he dashed outside.

The long files of the Barbarians were descending the mountain at a

run, and the Punic squares were advancing against them with a heavy

and regular oscillation. The mist, rent by the rays of the sun, formed

little rocking clouds which as they rose gradually discovered standards,

helmets, and points of pikes. Beneath the rapid evolutions portions of

the earth which were still in the shadow seemed to be displaced bodily;

in other places it looked as if huge torrents were crossing one

another, while thorny masses stood motionless between them. Matho could

distinguish the captains, soldiers, heralds, and even the serving-men,

who were mounted on asses in the rear. But instead of maintaining his

position in order to cover the foot-soldiers, Narr’ Havas turned

abruptly to the right, as though he wished himself to be crushed by

Hamilcar.

His horsemen outstripped the elephants, which were slackening their

speed; and all the horses, stretching out their unbridled heads,

galloped at so furious a rate that their bellies seemed to graze the

earth. Then suddenly Narr’ Havas went resolutely up to a sentry. He

threw away his sword, lance, and javelins, and disappeared among the

Carthaginians.

The king of the Numidians reached Hamilcar’s tent, and pointing to his

men, who were standing still at a distance, he said:

“Barca! I bring them to you. They are yours.”

Then he prostrated himself in token of bondage, and to prove his

fidelity recalled all his conduct from the beginning of the war.

First, he had prevented the siege of Carthage and the massacre of the

captives; then he had taken no advantage of the victory over Hanno after

the defeat at Utica. As to the Tyrian towns, they were on the frontiers

of his kingdom. Finally he had not taken part in the battle of the

Macaras; and he had even expressly absented himself in order to evade

the obligation of fighting against the Suffet.

Narr’ Havas had in fact wished to aggrandise himself by encroachments

upon the Punic provinces, and had alternately assisted and forsaken

the Mercenaries according to the chances of victory. But seeing that

Hamilcar would ultimately prove the stronger, he had gone over to him;

and in his desertion there was perhaps something of a grudge against

Matho, whether on account of the command or of his former love.

The Suffet listened without interrupting him. The man who thus presented

himself with an army where vengeance was his due was not an auxiliary to

be despised; Hamilcar at once divined the utility of such an alliance in

his great projects. With the Numidians he would get rid of the Libyans.

Then he would draw off the West to the conquest of Iberia; and, without

asking Narr’ Havas why he had not come sooner, or noticing any of his

lies, he kissed him, striking his breast thrice against his own.

It was to bring matters to an end and in despair that he had fired the

camp of the Libyans. This army came to him like a relief from the gods;

dissembling his joy he replied:

“May the Baals favour you! I do not know what the Republic will do for

you, but Hamilcar is not ungrateful.”

The tumult increased; some captains entered. He was arming himself as he

spoke.

“Come, return! You will use your horsemen to beat down their infantry

between your elephants and mine. Courage! exterminate them!”

And Narr’ Havas was rushing away when Salammbô appeared.

She leaped down quickly from her horse. She opened her ample cloak and

spreading out her arms displayed the zaïmph.

The leathern tent, which was raised at the corners, left visible the

entire circuit of the mountain with its thronging soldiers, and as

it was in the centre Salammbô could be seen on all sides. An immense

shouting burst forth, a long cry of triumph and hope. Those who were

marching stopped; the dying leaned on their elbows and turned round

to bless her. All the Barbarians knew now that she had recovered the

zaïmph; they saw her or believed that they saw her from a distance; and

other cries, but those of rage and vengeance, resounded in spite of the

plaudits of the Carthaginians. Thus did the five armies in tiers upon

the mountain stamp and shriek around Salammbô.

Hamilcar, who was unable to speak, nodded her his thanks. His eyes were

directed alternately upon the zaïmph and upon her, and he noticed that

her chainlet was broken. Then he shivered, being seized with a terrible

suspicion. But soon recovering his impassibility he looked sideways at

Narr’ Havas without turning his face.

The king of the Numidians held himself apart in a discreet attitude;

on his forehead he bore a little of the dust which he had touched when

prostrating himself. At last the Suffet advanced towards him with a look

full of gravity.

“As a reward for the services which you have rendered me, Narr’

Havas, I give you my daughter. Be my son,” he added, “and defend

your father!”

Narr’ Havas gave a great gesture of surprise; then he threw himself

upon Hamilcar’s hands and covered them with kisses.

Salammbô, calm as a statue, did not seem to understand. She blushed

a little as she cast down her eyelids, and her long curved lashes made

shadows upon her cheeks.

Hamilcar wished to unite them immediately in indissoluble betrothal. A

lance was placed in Salammbô’s hands and by her offered to Narr’

Havas; their thumbs were tied together with a thong of ox-leather; then

corn was poured upon their heads, and the grains that fell around them

rang like rebounding hail.

CHAPTER XII THE AQUEDUCT

Twelve hours afterwards all that remained of the Mercenaries was a heap

of wounded, dead, and dying.

Hamilcar had suddenly emerged from the bottom of the gorge, and again

descended the western slope that looked towards Hippo-Zarytus, and

the space being broader at this spot he had taken care to draw the

Barbarians into it. Narr’ Havas had encompassed them with his horse;

the Suffet meanwhile drove them back and crushed them. Then, too, they

were conquered beforehand by the loss of the zaïmph; even those who

cared nothing about it had experienced anguish and something akin to

enfeeblement. Hamilcar, not indulging his pride by holding the field of

battle, had retired a little further off on the left to some heights,

from which he commanded them.

The shape of the camps could be recognised by their sloping palisades.

A long heap of black cinders was smoking on the side of the Libyans;

the devastated soil showed undulations like the sea, and the tents with

their tattered canvas looked like dim ships half lost in the breakers.

Cuirasses, forks, clarions, pieces of wood, iron and brass, corn, straw,

and garments were scattered about among the corpses; here and there a

phalarica on the point of extinction burned against a heap of baggage;

in some places the earth was hidden with shields; horses’ carcasses

succeeded one another like a series of hillocks; legs, sandals, arms,

and coats of mail were to be seen, with heads held in their helmets by

the chin-pieces and rolling about like balls; heads of hair were hanging

on the thorns; elephants were lying with their towers in pools of blood,

with entrails exposed, and gasping. The foot trod on slimy things, and

there were swamps of mud although no rain had fallen.

This confusion of dead bodies covered the whole mountain from top to

bottom.

Those who survived stirred as little as the dead. Squatting in unequal

groups they looked at one another scared and without speaking.

The lake of Hippo-Zarytus shone at the end of a long meadow beneath

the setting sun. To the right an agglomeration of white houses extended

beyond a girdle of walls; then the sea spread out indefinitely; and the

Barbarians, with their chins in their hands, sighed as they thought of

their native lands. A cloud of grey dust was falling.

The evening wind blew; then every breast dilated, and as the freshness

increased, the vermin might be seen to forsake the dead, who were colder

now, and to run over the hot sand. Crows, looking towards the dying,

rested motionless on the tops of the big stones.

When night had fallen yellow-haired dogs, those unclean beasts which

followed the armies, came quite softly into the midst of the Barbarians.

At first they licked the clots of blood on the still tepid stumps; and

soon they began to devour the corpses, biting into the stomachs first of

all.

The fugitives reappeared one by one like shadows; the women also

ventured to return, for there were still some of them left, especially

among the Libyans, in spite of the dreadful massacre of them by the

Numidians.

Some took ropes’ ends and lighted them to use as torches. Others held

crossed pikes. The corpses were placed upon these and were conveyed

apart.

They were found lying stretched in long lines, on their backs, with

their mouths open, and their lances beside them; or else they were piled

up pell-mell so that it was often necessary to dig out a whole heap

in order to discover those they were wanting. Then the torch would be

passed slowly over their faces. They had received complicated wounds

from hideous weapons. Greenish strips hung from their foreheads; they

were cut in pieces, crushed to the marrow, blue from strangulation,

or broadly cleft by the elephants’ ivory. Although they had died at

almost the same time there existed differences between their various

states of corruption. The men of the North were puffed up with livid

swellings, while the more nervous Africans looked as though they had

been smoked, and were already drying up. The Mercenaries might be

recognised by the tattooing on their hands: the old soldiers of

Antiochus displayed a sparrow-hawk; those who had served in Egypt, the

head of the cynocephalus; those who had served with the princes of Asia,

a hatchet, a pomegranate, or a hammer; those who had served in the Greek

republics, the side-view of a citadel or the name of an archon; and some

were to be seen whose arms were entirely covered with these multiplied

symbols, which mingled with their scars and their recent wounds.

Four great funeral piles were erected for the men of Latin race, the

Samnites, Etruscans, Campanians, and Bruttians.

The Greeks dug pits with the points of their swords. The Spartans

removed their red cloaks and wrapped them round the dead; the Athenians

laid them out with their faces towards the rising sun; the Cantabrians

buried them beneath a heap of pebbles; the Nasamonians bent them double

with ox-leather thongs, and the Garamantians went and interred them on

the shore so that they might be perpetually washed by the waves. But the

Latins were grieved that they could not collect the ashes in urns; the

Nomads regretted the heat of the sands in which bodies were mummified,

and the Celts, the three rude stones beneath a rainy sky at the end of

an islet-covered gulf.

Vociferations arose, followed by the lengthened silence. This was to

oblige the souls to return. Then the shouting was resumed persistently

at regular intervals.

They made excuses to the dead for their inability to honour them as the

rites prescribed: for, owing to this deprivation, they would pass for

infinite periods through all kinds of chances and metamorphoses; they

questioned them and asked them what they desired; others loaded them

with abuse for having allowed themselves to be conquered.

The bloodless faces lying back here and there on wrecks of armour showed

pale in the light of the great funeral-pile; tears provoked tears, the

sobs became shriller, the recognitions and embracings more frantic.

Women stretched themselves on the corpses, mouth to mouth and brow to

brow; it was necessary to beat them in order to make them withdraw when

the earth was being thrown in. They blackened their cheeks; they cut off

their hair; they drew their own blood and poured it into the pits; they

gashed themselves in imitation of the wounds that disfigured the dead.

Roarings burst forth through the crashings of the cymbals. Some snatched

off their amulets and spat upon them. The dying rolled in the bloody

mire biting their mutilated fists in their rage; and forty-three

Samnites, quite a “sacred spring,” cut one another’s throats like

gladiators. Soon wood for the funeral-piles failed, the flames were

extinguished, every spot was occupied; and weary from shouting,

weakened, tottering, they fell asleep close to their dead brethren,

those who still clung to life full of anxieties, and the others desiring

never to wake again.

In the greyness of the dawn some soldiers appeared on the outskirts of

the Barbarians, and filed past with their helmets raised on the points

of their pikes; they saluted the Mercenaries and asked them whether they

had no messages to send to their native lands.

Others approached, and the Barbarians recognised some of their former

companions.

The Suffet had proposed to all the captives that they should serve in

his troops. Several had fearlessly refused; and quite resolved neither

to support them nor to abandon them to the Great Council, he had sent

them away with injunctions to fight no more against Carthage. As to

those who had been rendered docile by the fear of tortures, they had

been furnished with the weapons taken from the enemy; and they were now

presenting themselves to the vanquished, not so much in order to seduce

them as out of an impulse of pride and curiosity.

At first they told of the good treatment which they had received from

the Suffet; the Barbarians listened to them with jealousy although they

despised them. Then at the first words of reproach the cowards fell

into a passion; they showed them from a distance their own swords

and cuirasses and invited them with abuse to come and take them. The

Barbarians picked up flints; all took to flight; and nothing more could

be seen on the summit of the mountain except the lance-points projecting

above the edge of the palisades.

Then the Barbarians were overwhelmed with a grief that was heavier than

the humiliation of the defeat. They thought of the emptiness of their

courage, and they stood with their eyes fixed and grinding their teeth.

The same thought came to them all. They rushed tumultuously upon the

Carthaginian prisoners. It chanced that the Suffet’s soldiers had

been unable to discover them, and as he had withdrawn from the field of

battle they were still in the deep pit.

They were ranged on the ground on a flattened spot. Sentries formed a

circle round them, and the women were allowed to enter thirty or forty

at a time. Wishing to profit by the short time that was allowed to them,