CHAPTER III Salammbô
The moon was rising just above the waves, and on the town whichwas still wrapped in darkness there glittered white and luminousspecks:—the pole of a chariot, a dangling rag of linen, the corner ofa wall, or a golden necklace on the bosom of a god. The glass balls onthe roofs of the temples beamed like great diamonds here and there.But ill-defined ruins, piles of black earth, and gardens formed deepermasses in the gloom, and below Malqua fishermen’s nets stretchedfrom one house to another like gigantic bats spreading their wings. Thegrinding of the hydraulic wheels which conveyed water to the higheststorys of the palaces, was no longer heard; and the camels, lyingostrich fashion on their stomachs, rested peacefully in the middle ofthe terraces. The porters were asleep in the streets on the thresholdsof the houses; the shadows of the colossuses stretched across thedeserted squares; occasionally in the distance the smoke of a stillburning sacrifice would escape through the bronze tiling, and the heavybreeze would waft the odours of aromatics blended with the scent of thesea and the exhalation from the sun-heated walls. The motionless wavesshone around Carthage, for the moon was spreading her light at once uponthe mountain-circled gulf and upon the lake of Tunis, where flamingoesformed long rose-coloured lines amid the banks of sand, while furtheron beneath the catacombs the great salt lagoon shimmered like a pieceof silver. The blue vault of heaven sank on the horizon in one directioninto the dustiness of the plains, and in the other into the mists of thesea, and on the summit of the Acropolis, the pyramidal cypress trees,fringing the temple of Eschmoun, swayed murmuring like the regular wavesthat beat slowly along the mole beneath the ramparts.
Salammbô ascended to the terrace of her palace, supported by a femaleslave who carried an iron dish filled with live coals.
In the middle of the terrace there was a small ivory bed coveredwith lynx skins, and cushions made with the feathers of the parrot, afatidical animal consecrated to the gods; and at the four corners rosefour long perfuming-pans filled with nard, incense, cinnamomum, andmyrrh. The slave lit the perfumes. Salammbô looked at the polar star;she slowly saluted the four points of heaven, and knelt down on theground in the azure dust which was strewn with golden stars in imitationof the firmament. Then with both elbows against her sides, her fore-armsstraight and her hands open, she threw back her head beneath the rays ofthe moon, and said:
“O Rabetna!—Baalet!—Tanith!” and her voice was lengthened ina plaintive fashion as if calling to some one. “Anaïtis! Astarte!Derceto! Astoreth! Mylitta! Athara! Elissa! Tiratha!—By the hiddensymbols, by the resounding sistra,—by the furrows of the earth,—bythe eternal silence and by the eternal fruitfulness,—mistress of thegloomy sea and of the azure shores, O Queen of the watery world, allhail!”
She swayed her whole body twice or thrice, and then cast herself facedownwards in the dust with both arms outstretched.
But the slave nimbly raised her, for according to the rites someone mustcatch the suppliant at the moment of his prostration; this told himthat the gods accepted him, and Salammbô’s nurse never failed in thispious duty.
Some merchants from Darytian Gætulia had brought her to Carthage whenquite young, and after her enfranchisement she would not forsake her oldmasters, as was shown by her right ear, which was pierced with a largehole. A petticoat of many-coloured stripes fitted closely on her hips,and fell to her ankles, where two tin rings clashed together. Hersomewhat flat face was yellow like her tunic. Silver bodkins of greatlength formed a sun behind her head. She wore a coral button on thenostril, and she stood beside the bed more erect than a Hermes, and withher eyelids cast down.
Salammbô walked to the edge of the terrace; her eyes swept the horizonfor an instant, and then were lowered upon the sleeping town, while thesigh that she heaved swelled her bosom, and gave an undulating movementto the whole length of the long white simar which hung without clasp orgirdle about her. Her curved and painted sandals were hidden beneatha heap of emeralds, and a net of purple thread was filled with herdisordered hair.
But she raised her head to gaze upon the moon, and murmured, minglingher speech with fragments of hymns:
“How lightly turnest thou, supported by the impalpable ether! Itbrightens about thee, and ’Tis the stir of thine agitation thatdistributes the winds and fruitful dews. According as thou dost waxand 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 shellsto swell, the wine to bubble, and the corpse to putrefy! Thou formestthe pearls at the bottom of the sea!
“And every germ, O goddess! ferments in the dark depths of thymoisture.
“When thou appearest, quietness is spread abroad upon the earth; theflowers close, the waves are soothed, wearied man stretches his breasttoward thee, and the world with its oceans and mountains looks atitself 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 ofbuildings, 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 achariot.
“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 motionlessearth.
“Taanach, take your nebal and play softly on the silver string, for myheart 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 crystalglobe, and with both hands began to play.
The sounds followed one another hurried and deep, like the buzzing ofbees, and with increasing sonorousness floated away into the night withthe complaining of the waves, and the rustling of the great trees on thesummit of the Acropolis.
“Hush!” cried Salammbô.
“What ails you, mistress? The blowing of the breeze, the passing of acloud, 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 inwine!”
“Perhaps it is the smoke of your perfumes?”
“No!” said Salammbô; “the spirit of the gods dwells in fragrantodours.”
Then the slave spoke to her of her father. It was thought that he hadgone towards the amber country, behind the pillars of Melkarth. “Butif he does not return,” she said, “you must nevertheless, since itwas his will, choose a husband among the sons of the Ancients, and thenyour grief will pass away in a man’s arms.”
“Why?” asked the young girl. All those that she had seen hadhorrified her with their fallow-deer laughter and their coarse limbs.
“Sometimes, Tanaach, from the depths of my being there exhale as itwere 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 atthe point of death; and then, something sweet, flowing from my brow tomy feet, passes through my flesh—it is a caress enfolding me, and Ifeel myself crushed as if some god were stretched upon me. Oh! wouldthat I could lose myself in the mists of the night, the waters of thefountains, the sap of the trees, that I could issue from my body, and bebut 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 inits 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 withdolphin’s teeth about her n
eck to banish terrors, and Salammbô saidin 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 wasreserving her for some alliance that might serve his political ends; sothat Salammbô lived alone in the midst of the palace. Her mother waslong since dead.
She had grown up with abstinences, fastings and purifications, alwayssurrounded by grave and exquisite things, her body saturated withperfumes, and her soul filled with prayers. She had never tasted wine,nor eaten meat, nor touched an unclean animal, nor set her heels in thehouse of death.
She knew nothing of obscene images, for as each god was manifestedin different forms, the same principle often received the witnessof contradictory cults, and Salammbô worshipped the goddess in hersidereal presentation. An influence had descended upon the maiden fromthe moon; when the planet passed diminishing away, Salammbô grew weak.She languished the whole day long, and revived at evening. During aneclipse she nearly died.
But Rabetna, in jealousy, revenged herself for the virginity withdrawnfrom her sacrifices, and she tormented Salammbô with possessions, allthe stronger for being vague, which were spread through this belief andexcited by it.
Unceasingly was Hamilcar’s daughter disquieted about Tanith. She hadlearned her adventures, her travels, and all her names, which she wouldrepeat without their having any distinct signification for her. Inorder to penetrate into the depths of her dogma, she wished to becomeacquainted, in the most secret part of the temple, with the old idol inthe magnificent mantle, whereon depended the destinies of Carthage, forthe 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 hisvirtue, and in a measure to rule him.
But Salammbô turned around. She had recognised the sound of the goldenbells which Schahabarim wore at the hem of his garment.
He ascended the staircases; then at the threshold of the terrace hestopped and folded his arms.
His sunken eyes shone like the lamps of a sepulchre; his long thin bodyfloated in its linen robe which was weighted by the bells, the latteralternating with balls of emeralds at his heels. He had feeble limbs, anoblique skull and a pointed chin; his skin seemed cold to the touch, andhis yellow face, which was deeply furrowed with wrinkles, was as if itcontracted in a longing, in an everlasting grief.
He was the high priest of Tanith, and it was he who had educatedSalammbô.
“Speak!” he said. “What will you?”
“I hoped—you had almost promised me—” She stammered and wasconfused; then suddenly: “Why do you despise me? what have I forgottenin the rites? You are my master, and you told me that no one was soaccomplished in the things pertaining to the goddess as I; but there aresome 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 climbedthe steps of Eschmoun, god of the planets and intelligences; I haveslept beneath the golden olive of Melkarth, patron of the Tyriancolonies; I have pushed open the doors of Baal-Khamon, the enlightenerand fertiliser; I have sacrificed to the subterranean Kabiri, to thegods of woods, winds, rivers and mountains; but, can you understand?they are all too far away, too high, too insensible, while she—I feelher mingled in my life; she fills my soul, and I quiver with inwardstartings, as though she were leaping in order to escape. Methinks I amabout to hear her voice, and see her face, lightnings dazzle me and thenI sink back again into the darkness.”
Schahabarim was silent. She entreated him with suppliant looks. Atlast he made a sign for the dismissal of the slave, who was not ofChanaanitish race. Taanach disappeared, and Schahabarim, raising one armin the air, began:
“Before the gods darkness alone was, and a breathing stirred dulland indistinct as the conscience of a man in a dream. It contracted,creating Desire and Cloud, and from Desire and Cloud there issuedprimitive Matter. This was a water, muddy, black, icy and deep. Itcontained senseless monsters, incoherent portions of the forms to beborn, which are painted on the walls of the sanctuaries.
“Then Matter condensed. It became an egg. It burst. One half formedthe earth and the other the firmament. Sun, moon, winds and cloudsappeared, and at the crash of the thunder intelligent creatures awoke.Then Eschmoun spread himself in the starry sphere; Khamon beamed inthe sun; Melkarth thrust him with his arms behind Gades; the Kabiridescended beneath the volcanoes, and Rabetna like a nurse bent over theworld 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 fromsublimer prospects; but the maiden’s desire kindled again at his lastwords, 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 althoughshe is everywhere diffused, it is here that she dwells, beneath thesacred veil.”
“O father!” cried Salammbô, “I shall see her, shall I not? youwill bring me to her! I had long been hesitating; I am devoured withcuriosity 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 Baalsare unveiled to us alone who are men in understanding and women inweakness. Your desire is sacrilege; be satisfied with the knowledge thatyou possess!”
She fell upon her knees placing two fingers against her ears in token ofrepentance; and crushed by the priest’s words, and filled at once withanger against him, with terror and humiliation, she burst into sobs.Schahabarim remained erect, and more insensible than the stones of theterrace. He looked down upon her quivering at his feet, and felt a kindof joy on seeing her suffer for his divinity whom he himself could notwholly 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 likeslight mists trailing along the ground; then these became a greatcurtain of dust extending perpendicularly, and, amid the whirlwinds ofthe thronging mass, dromedaries’ heads, lances and shields appeared.It was the army of the Barbarians advancing upon Carthage.