CHAPTER XI IN THE TENT
The man who guided Salammbô made her ascend again beyond the pharosin the direction of the Catacombs, and then go down the long suburb ofMolouya, which was full of steep lanes. The sky was beginning to growgrey. Sometimes palm-wood beams jutting out from the walls obliged themto bend their heads. The two horses which were at the walk would oftenslip; and thus they reached the Teveste gate.
Its heavy leaves were half open; they passed through, and it closedbehind them.
At first they followed the foot of the ramparts for a time, and at theheight of the cisterns they took their way along the Tænia, a narrowstrip of yellow earth separating the gulf from the lake and extending asfar as Rhades.
No one was to be seen around Carthage, whether on the sea or in thecountry. The slate-coloured waves chopped softly, and the light windblowing their foam hither and thither spotted them with white rents.In spite of all her veils, Salammbô shivered in the freshness of themorning; the motion and the open air dazed her. Then the sun rose; itpreyed on the back of her head, and she involuntarily dozed a little.The two animals rambled along side by side, their feet sinking into thesilent sand.
When they had passed the mountain of the Hot Springs, they went on at amore rapid rate, the ground being firmer.
But although it was the season for sowing and ploughing, the fields wereas empty as the desert as far as the eye could reach. Here and therewere scattered heaps of corn; at other places the barley was sheddingits 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 standingon the edge of the road. The roofs of the cottages were falling in, andin the interiors might be distinguished fragments of pottery, rags ofclothing, and all kinds of unrecognisable utensils and broken things.Often a creature clothed in tatters, with earthy face and flaming eyeswould emerge from these ruins. But he would very quickly begin to run orwould disappear into a hole. Salammbô and her guide did not stop.
Deserted plains succeeded one another. Charcoal dust which was raised bytheir feet behind them, stretched in unequal trails over large spacesof perfectly white soil. Sometimes they came upon little peaceful spots,where a brook flowed amid the long grass; and as they ascended the otherbank Salammbô would pluck damp leaves to cool her hands. At the cornerof a wood of rose-bays her horse shied violently at the corpse of a manwhich lay extended on the ground.
The slave immediately settled her again on the cushions. He was one ofthe servants of the Temple, a man whom Schahabarim used to employ onperilous missions.
With extreme precaution he now went on foot beside her and between thehorses; he would whip the animals with the end of a leathern lace woundround his arm, or would perhaps take balls made of wheat, dates, andyolks of eggs wrapped in lotus leaves from a scrip hanging against hisbreast, and offer them to Salammbô without speaking, and running allthe time.
In the middle of the day three Barbarians clad in animals’ skinscrossed their path. By degrees others appeared wandering in troops often, twelve, or twenty-five men; many were driving goats or a limpingcow. Their heavy sticks bristled with brass points; cutlasses gleamedin their clothes, which were savagely dirty, and they opened their eyeswith a look of menace and amazement. As they passed some sent thema vulgar benediction; others obscene jests, and Schahabarim’s manreplied to each in his own idiom. He told them that this was a sickyouth going to be cured at a distant temple.
However, the day was closing in. Barkings were heard, and theyapproached them.
Then in the twilight they perceived an enclosure of dry stones shuttingin a rambling edifice. A dog was running along the top of the wall. Theslave threw some pebbles at him and they entered a lofty vaulted hall.
A woman was crouching in the centre warming herself at a fire ofbrushwood, the smoke of which escaped through the holes in the ceiling.She was half hidden by her white hair which fell to her knees; andunwilling to answer, she muttered with idiotic look words of vengeanceagainst the Barbarians and the Carthaginians.
The runner ferreted right and left. Then he returned to her and demandedsomething to eat. The old woman shook her head, and murmured with hereyes fixed upon the charcoal:
“I was the hand. The ten fingers are cut off. The mouth eats nomore.”
The slave showed her a handful of gold pieces. She rushed upon them, butsoon resumed her immobility.
At last he placed a dagger which he had in his girdle beneath herthroat. Then, trembling, she went and raised a large stone, and broughtback an amphora of wine with fish from Hippo-Zarytus preserved in honey.
Salammbô turned away from this unclean food, and fell asleep on thehorses’ 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 offits 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 athim from behind. Salammbô perceived this, and pressed the amulet whichshe wore above her heart.
They resumed their journey.
From time to time she asked whether they would not arrive soon. The roadundulated over little hills. Nothing was to be heard but the grating ofthe grasshoppers. The sun heated the yellowed grass; the ground was allchinked with crevices which in dividing formed, as it were, monstrouspaving-stones. Sometimes a viper passed, or eagles flew by; the slavestill continued running. Salammbô mused beneath her veils, and in spiteof the heat did not lay them aside through fear of soiling her beautifulgarments.
At regular distances stood towers built by the Carthaginians for thepurpose of keeping watch upon the tribes. They entered these for thesake of the shade, and then set out again.
For prudence sake they had made a wide detour the day before. But theymet with no one just now; the region being a sterile one, the Barbarianshad not passed that way.
Gradually the devastation began again. Sometimes a piece of mosaic wouldbe displayed in the centre of a field, the sole remnant of a vanishedmansion; and the leafless olive trees looked at a distance like largebushes of thorns. They passed through a town in which houses were burntto the ground. Human skeletons might be seen along the walls. There weresome, too, of dromedaries and mules. Half-gnawed carrion blocked thestreets.
Night fell. The sky was lowering and cloudy.
They ascended again for two hours in a westerly direction, when suddenlythey perceived a quantity of little flames before them.
These were shining at the bottom of an ampitheatre. Gold plates, as theydisplaced one another, glanced here and there. These were the cuirassesof the Clinabarians in the Punic camp; then in the neighbourhood theydistinguished other and more numerous lights, for the armies of theMercenaries, now blended together, extended over a great space.
Salammbô made a movement as though to advance. But Schahabarim’sman took her further away, and they passed along by the terrace whichenclosed the camp of the Barbarians. A breach became visible in it, andthe slave disappeared.
A sentry was walking upon the top of the entrenchment with a bow in hishand and a pike on his shoulder.
Salammbô drew still nearer; the Barbarian knelt and a long arrowpierced the hem of her cloak. Then as she stood motionless andshrieking, he asked her what she wanted.
“To speak to Matho,” she replied. “I am a fugitive fromCarthage.”
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 yellowveil with black flowers over her face, and so many draperies about herperson, that it was impossible to make any guess about her. From the topof the terrace he gazed upon this vague form standing up like a phantomin 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. Hefelt 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 theBarbarians.
It was filled with a great tumult and a great throng. Bright fires wereburning beneath hanging pots; and their purpled reflections illuminatingsome places left others completely in the dark. There was shouting andcalling; shackled horses formed long straight lines amid the tents; thelatter were round and square, of leather or of canvas; there were hutsof reeds, and holes in the sand such as are made by dogs. Soldiers werecarting faggots, resting on their elbows on the ground, or wrappingthemselves up in mats and preparing to sleep; and Salammbô’s horsesometimes stretched out a leg and jumped in order to pass over them.
She remembered that she had seen them before; but their beards werelonger now, their faces still blacker, and their voices hoarser. Matho,who walked before her, waved them off with a gesture of his arm whichraised his red mantle. Some kissed his hands; others bending theirspines approached him to ask for orders, for he was now veritable andsole chief of the Barbarians; Spendius, Autaritus, and Narr’ Havas hadbecome disheartened, and he had displayed so much audacity and obstinacythat 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 faceswere resting against the edge of it on a level with the ground, asdecapitated heads might have done. However, their eyes moved, and fromthese half-opened mouths groanings escaped in the Punic tongue.
Two Negroes holding resin lights stood on both sides of the door. Mathodrew the canvas abruptly aside. She followed him.
It was a deep tent with a pole standing up in the centre. It was lightedby a large lamp-holder shaped like a lotus and full of a yellow oilwherein floated handfuls of burning tow, and military things might bedistinguished gleaming in the shade. A naked sword leaned against astool by the side of a shield; whips of hippopotamus leather,cymbals, bells, and necklaces were displayed pell-mell on baskets ofesparto-grass; a felt rug lay soiled with crumbs of black bread; somecopper money was carelessly heaped upon a round stone in a corner, andthrough the rents in the canvas the wind brought the dust from without,together with the smell of the elephants, which might be heard eatingand shaking their chains.
“Who are you?” said Matho.
She looked slowly around her without replying; then her eyes werearrested in the background, where something bluish and sparkling fellupon a bed of palm-branches.
She advanced quickly. A cry escaped her. Matho stamped his foot behindher.
“Who brings you here? why do you come?”
“To take it!” she replied, pointing to the zaïmph, and with theother hand she tore the veils from her head. He drew back with hiselbows behind him, gaping, almost terrified.
She felt as if she were leaning on the might of the gods; and looking athim face to face she asked him for the zaïmph; she demanded it in wordsabundant and superb.
Matho did not hear; he was gazing at her, and in his eyes her garmentswere blended with her body. The clouding of the stuffs, like thesplendour of her skin, was something special and belonging to her alone.Her eyes and her diamonds sparkled; the polish of her nails continuedthe delicacy of the stones which loaded her fingers; the two clasps ofher tunic raised her breasts somewhat and brought them closer together,and he in thought lost himself in the narrow interval between themwhence there fell a thread holding a plate of emeralds which could beseen lower down beneath the violet gauze. She had as earrings two littlesapphire scales, each supporting a hollow pearl filled with liquidscent. A little drop would fall every moment through the holes in thepearl and moisten her naked shoulder. Matho watched it fall.
He was carried away by ungovernable curiosity; and, like a child layinghis hand upon a strange fruit, he tremblingly and lightly touchedthe top of her chest with the tip of his finger: the flesh, which wassomewhat cold, yielded with an elastic resistance.
This contact, though scarcely a sensible one, shook Matho to the verydepths of his nature. An uprising of his whole being urged him towardsher. He would fain have enveloped her, absorbed her, drunk her. Hisbosom was panting, his teeth were chattering.
Taking her by the wrists he drew her gently to him, and then satdown upon a cuirass beside the palm-tree bed which was covered with alion’s skin. She was standing. He looked up at her, holding her thusbetween his knees, and repeating:
“How beautiful you are! how beautiful you are!”
His eyes, which were continually fixed upon hers, pained her; and theuncomfortableness, the repugnance increased in so acute a fashion thatSalammbô put a constraint upon herself not to cry out. The thought ofSchahabarim came back to her, and she resigned herself.
Matho still kept her little hands in his own; and from time to time, inspite of the priest’s command, she turned away her face and tried tothrust him off by jerking her arms. He opened his nostrils the betterto breathe in the perfume which exhaled from her person. It was a fresh,indefinable emanation, which nevertheless made him dizzy, like the smokefrom a perfuming-pan. She smelt of honey, pepper, incense, roses, withanother odour still.
But how was she thus with him in his tent, and at his disposal? Some oneno 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 fumingcups and my slaughtered slaves, and your anger was so strong that youbounded towards me and I was obliged to fly! Then terror entered intoCarthage. There were cries of the devastation of the towns, the burningof the country-seats, the massacre of the soldiery; it was you who hadruined them, it was you who had murdered them! I hate you! Your veryname gnaws me like remorse! You are execrated more than the plague, andthe Roman war! The provinces shudder at your fury, the furrows are fullof corpses! I have followed the traces of your fires as though I weretravelling behind Moloch!”
Matho leaped up; his heart was swelling with colossal pride; he wasraised 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 sleepcovered with the zaïmph! Your words I did not understand; but I couldsee that you wished to drag me to some terrible thing at the bottom ofan abyss.”
Matho, writhing his arms, exclaimed:
“No! no! it was to give it to you! to restore it to you! It seemed tome that the goddess had left her garment for you, and that it belongedto you! In her temple or in your house, what does it matter? are you notall-powerful, immaculate, radiant and beautiful even as Tanith?” Andwith 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 sheepbleated, 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 theMercenaries, ay, and so meek that I used to carry wood on my back forthe others. Do I trouble myself about Carthage! The crowd of its peoplemove 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 thefreshness of your lips and the turn of your shoulders. But I wanted tothrow down its walls that I might reach you to possess you! Moreover,I was revenging myself in the meantime! At present I crush men likeshells, and I throw myself upon phalanxes; I put aside the sarissæ withmy hands, I check the stallions by the nostrils; a catapult wouldnot 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 suddenlyseizes me and entwines me like a net! I perceive your eyes in the flamesof the phalaricas and on the gilding of the shields! I hear your voicein the sounding of the cymbals. I turn aside, but you are not there! andI plunge again into the battle!”
He raised his arms whereon his veins crossed one another like ivy onthe branches of a tree. Sweat flowed down his breast between his squaremuscles; and his breathing shook his sides with his bronze girdle allgarnished with thongs hanging down to his knees, which were firmer thanmarble. Salammbô, who was accustomed to eunuchs, yielded to amazementat the strength of this man. It was the chastisement of the goddess orthe influence of Moloch in motion around her in the five armies. She wasoverwhelmed with lassitude; and she listened in a state of stupor to theintermittent shouts of the sentinels as they answered one another.
The flames of the lamp kindled in the squalls of hot air. There cameat times broad lightning flashes; then the darkness increased; and shecould only see Matho’s eyeballs like two coals in the night. However,she felt that a fatality was surrounding her, that she had reached asupreme and irrevocable moment, and making an effort she went up againtowards 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 heelswere 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 conquerme, and then disappear! No, no! you belong to me! and no one now shalltear you from here! Oh! I have not forgotten the insolence of yourlarge tranquil eyes, and how you crushed me with the haughtiness of yourbeauty! ’Tis my turn now! You are my captive, my slave, my servant!Call, if you like, on your father and his army, the Ancients, therich, and your whole accursed people! I am the master of three hundredthousand 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 burnall its temples; the triremes shall float on the waves of blood! I willnot have a house, a stone, or a palm tree remaining! And if men fail meI will draw the bears from the mountains and urge on the lions! Seek notto fly or I kill you!”
Pale and with clenched fists he quivered like a harp whose strings areabout to burst. Suddenly sobs stifled him, and he sank down upon hishams.
“Ah! forgive me! I am a scoundrel, and viler than scorpions, than mireand dust! Just now while you were speaking your breath passed across myface, and I rejoiced like a dying man who drinks lying flat on the edgeof a stream. Crush me, if only I feel your feet! curse me, if only Ihear 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 formwith both his arms, his head thrown back, and his hands wandering; thegold discs hanging from his ears gleamed upon his bronzed neck; bigtears rolled in his eyes like silver globes; he sighed caressingly, andmurmured vague words lighter than a breeze and sweet as a kiss.
Salammbô was invaded by a weakness in which she lost all consciousnessof herself. Something at once inward and lofty, a command from the gods,obliged her to yield herself; clouds uplifted her, and she fell backswooning upon the bed amid the lion’s hair. The zaïmph fell, andenveloped her; she could see Matho’s face bending down above herbreast.
“Moloch, thou burnest me!” and the soldier’s kisses, moredevouring than flames, covered her; she was as though swept away in ahurricane, taken in the might of the sun.
He kissed all her fingers, her arms, her feet, and the long tresses ofher 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 smokingperfumes rock like eternal censers; in the citron trees, which arehigher than cedars, milk-coloured serpents cause the fruit to fall uponthe turf with the diamonds in their jaws; the air is so mild that itkeeps you from dying. Oh! I shall find it, you will see. We shall livein crystal grottoes cut out at the foot of the hills. No one dwells init yet, or I shall become the king of the country.”
He brushed the dust off her cothurni; he wanted her to put a quarter ofa pomegranate between her lips; he heaped up garments behind her head tomake a cushion for her. He sought for means to serve her, and to humblehimself, and he even spread the zaïmph over her feet as if it were amere rug.
“Have you still,” he said, “those little gazelle’s horns onwhich your necklaces hang? You will give them to me! I love them!” Forhe spoke as if the war were finished, and joyful laughs broke from him.The Mercenaries, Hamilcar, every obstacle had now disappeared. The moonwas gliding between two clouds. They could see it through an opening inthe tent. “Ah, what nights have I spent gazing at her! she seemed tome 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 longerdistinguish you!” And with his head between her breasts he weptcopiously.
“And this,” she thought, “is the formidable man who makes Carthagetremble!”
He fell asleep. Then disengaging herself from his arm she put one footto the ground, and she perceived that her chainlet was broken.
The maidens of the great families were accustomed to respect theseshackles 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 hadpassed through, whirled in tumultuous yet distinct images through hermemory. But an abyss had yawned and thrown them far back to an infinitedistance 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 armover the edge of the couch. His band of pearls was raised somewhat, anduncovered his brow; his teeth were parted in a smile; they shone throughhis black beard, and there was a silent and almost outrageous gaiety inhis 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 thebed; the sight of the gleaming blade fired her with a sanguinary desire.Mournful voices lingered at a distance in the shade, and like a chorusof geniuses urged her on. She approached it; she seized the steel by thehandle. At the rustling of her dress Matho half opened his eyes, puttingforth his mouth upon her hands, and the dagger fell.
Shouts arose; a terrible light flashed behind the canvas. Matho raisedthe latter; they perceived the camp of the Libyans enveloped in greatflames.
Their reed huts were burning, and the twisting stems burst in the smokeand flew off like arrows; black shadows ran about distractedly on thered horizon. They could hear the shrieks of those who were in thehuts; the elephants, oxen, and horses plunged in the midst of the crowdcrushing it together with the stores and baggage that were being rescuedfrom 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 wassurprised that she had not the happiness which she had once imagined toherself. She stood with melancholy before her accomplished dream.
But the lower part of the tent was raised, and a monstrous formappeared. Salammbô could at first distinguish only the two eyes anda long white beard which hung down to the ground; for the rest of thebody, which was cumbered with the rags of a tawny garment, trailed alongthe earth; and with every forward movement the hands passed into thebeard and then
fell again. Crawling in this way it reached her feet, andSalammbô recognised the aged Gisco.
In fact, the Mercenaries had broken the legs of the captive Ancientswith a brass bar to prevent them from taking to flight; and they wereall rotting pell-mell in a pit in the midst of filth. But the sturdiestof them raised themselves and shouted when they heard the noise ofplatters, and it was in this way that Gisco had seen Salammbô. Hehad guessed that she was a Carthaginian woman by the little balls ofsandastrum flapping against her cothurni; and having a presentimentof an important mystery he had succeeded, with the assistance of hiscompanions, in getting out of the pit; then with elbows and hands he haddragged himself twenty paces further on as far as Matho’s tent. Twovoices were speaking within it. He had listened outside and had heardeverything.
“It is you!” she said at last, almost terrified.
“Yes, it is I!” he replied, raising himself on his wrists. “Theythink me dead, do they not?”
She bent her head. He resumed:
“Ah! why have the Baals not granted me this mercy!” He approachedso close he was touching her. “They would have spared me the pain ofcursing you!”
Salammbô sprang quickly back, so much afraid was she of this uncleanbeing, who was as hideous as a larva and nearly as terrible as aphantom.
“I am nearly one hundred years old,” he said. “I have seenAgathocles; I have seen Regulus and the eagles of the Romans passingover the harvests of the Punic fields! I have seen all the terrors ofbattles and the sea encumbered with the wrecks of our fleets! Barbarianswhom I used to command have chained my four limbs like a slave thathas committed murder. My companions are dying around me, one after theother; the odour of their corpses awakes me in the night; I drive awaythe birds that come to peck out their eyes; and yet not for a single dayhave I despaired of Carthage! Though I had seen all the armies of theearth against her, and the flames of the siege overtop the height of thetemples, I should have still believed in her eternity! But now all isover! all is lost! The gods execrate her! A curse upon you who havequickened her ruin by your disgrace!”
She opened her lips.
“Ah! I was there!” he cried. “I heard you gurgling with love likea prostitute; then he told you of his desire, and you allowed him tokiss your hands! But if the frenzy of your unchastity urged you toit, you should at least have done as do the fallow deer, which hidethemselves in their copulations, and not have displayed your shamebeneath your father’s very eyes!”
“What?” she said.
“Ah! you did not know that the two entrenchments are sixty cubits fromeach other and that your Matho, in the excess of his pride, has postedhimself just in front of Hamilcar. Your father is there behind you; andcould 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 onthe garment of the goddess to please him; and in yielding her body tohim she surrenders with the glory of your name the majesty of the gods,the vengeance of her country, even the safety of Carthage!’” Themotion of his toothless mouth moved his beard throughout its length;his eyes were riveted upon her and devoured her; panting in the dust herepeated:
“Ah! sacrilegious one! May you be accursed! accursed! accursed!”
Salammbô had drawn back the canvas; she held it raised at arm’slength, and without answering him she looked in the direction ofHamilcar.
“It is this way, is it not?” she said.
“What matters it to you? Turn away! Begone! Rather crush your faceagainst the earth! It is a holy spot which would be polluted by yourgaze!”
She threw the zaïmph about her waist, and quickly picked up her veils,mantle, and scarf. “I hasten thither!” she cried; and making herescape Salammbô disappeared.
At first she walked through the darkness without meeting any one, forall were betaking themselves to the fire; the uproar was increasing andgreat 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 ofGisco, 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 theentrenchment. She took the hem of her robe, which impeded her, in herteeth, and in three bounds she was on the platform.
A sonorous shout burst forth beneath her in the shade, the same whichshe had heard at the foot of the galley staircase, and leaning over sherecognised Schahabarim’s man with his coupled horses.
He had wandered all night between the two entrenchments; then disquietedby the fire, he had gone back again trying to see what was passing inMatho’s camp; and, knowing that this spot was nearest to his tent, hehad not stirred from it, in obedience to the priest’s command.
He stood up on one of the horses. Salammbô let herself slide down tohim; and they fled at full gallop, circling the Punic camp in search ofa gate.
Matho had re-entered his tent. The smoky lamp gave but little light, andhe also believed that Salammbô was asleep. Then he delicately touchedthe lion’s skin on the palm-tree bed. He called but she did notanswer; 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, andclashing of armour rose in the air, and clarion flourishes soundedthe 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 arun, and the Punic squares were advancing against them with a heavyand regular oscillation. The mist, rent by the rays of the sun, formedlittle rocking clouds which as they rose gradually discovered standards,helmets, and points of pikes. Beneath the rapid evolutions portions ofthe earth which were still in the shadow seemed to be displaced bodily;in other places it looked as if huge torrents were crossing oneanother, while thorny masses stood motionless between them. Matho coulddistinguish the captains, soldiers, heralds, and even the serving-men,who were mounted on asses in the rear. But instead of maintaining hisposition in order to cover the foot-soldiers, Narr’ Havas turnedabruptly to the right, as though he wished himself to be crushed byHamilcar.
His horsemen outstripped the elephants, which were slackening theirspeed; and all the horses, stretching out their unbridled heads,galloped at so furious a rate that their bellies seemed to graze theearth. Then suddenly Narr’ Havas went resolutely up to a sentry. Hethrew away his sword, lance, and javelins, and disappeared among theCarthaginians.
The king of the Numidians reached Hamilcar’s tent, and pointing to hismen, 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 hisfidelity recalled all his conduct from the beginning of the war.
First, he had prevented the siege of Carthage and the massacre of thecaptives; then he had taken no advantage of the victory over Hanno afterthe defeat at Utica. As to the Tyrian towns, they were on the frontiersof his kingdom. Finally he had not taken part in the battle of theMacaras; and he had even expressly absented himself in order to evadethe obligation of fighting against the Suffet.
Narr’ Havas had in fact wished to aggrandise himself by encroachmentsupon the Punic provinces, and had alternately assisted and forsakenthe Mercenaries according to the chances of victory. But seeing thatHamilcar would ultimately prove the stronger, he had gone over to him;and in his desertion there was perhaps something of a grudge againstMatho, whether on account of the command or of his former love.
The Suffet listened without interrupting him. The man who thus presentedhimself with an army where vengeance was his due was not an auxiliary tobe despised; Hamilcar at once divined the utility of such an alliance inhis 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, withoutasking Narr’ Havas why he had not come sooner, or noticing a
ny of hislies, 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 thecamp 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 foryou, but Hamilcar is not ungrateful.”
The tumult increased; some captains entered. He was arming himself as hespoke.
“Come, return! You will use your horsemen to beat down their infantrybetween 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 andspreading out her arms displayed the zaïmph.
The leathern tent, which was raised at the corners, left visible theentire circuit of the mountain with its thronging soldiers, and asit was in the centre Salammbô could be seen on all sides. An immenseshouting burst forth, a long cry of triumph and hope. Those who weremarching stopped; the dying leaned on their elbows and turned roundto bless her. All the Barbarians knew now that she had recovered thezaïmph; they saw her or believed that they saw her from a distance; andother cries, but those of rage and vengeance, resounded in spite of theplaudits of the Carthaginians. Thus did the five armies in tiers uponthe mountain stamp and shriek around Salammbô.
Hamilcar, who was unable to speak, nodded her his thanks. His eyes weredirected alternately upon the zaïmph and upon her, and he noticed thather chainlet was broken. Then he shivered, being seized with a terriblesuspicion. But soon recovering his impassibility he looked sideways atNarr’ 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 whenprostrating himself. At last the Suffet advanced towards him with a lookfull 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 defendyour father!”
Narr’ Havas gave a great gesture of surprise; then he threw himselfupon Hamilcar’s hands and covered them with kisses.
Salammbô, calm as a statue, did not seem to understand. She blusheda little as she cast down her eyelids, and her long curved lashes madeshadows upon her cheeks.
Hamilcar wished to unite them immediately in indissoluble betrothal. Alance was placed in Salammbô’s hands and by her offered to Narr’Havas; their thumbs were tied together with a thong of ox-leather; thencorn was poured upon their heads, and the grains that fell around themrang like rebounding hail.