Salammbô | Page 7

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. Salammbo 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 Hermaeum 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