Salammbô | Page 4

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,