第114章

The slaves of the Council struck him with their whips of hippopotamus leather, so furiously and long that the fringes of their tunics were drenched with sweat.Matho appeared insensible; suddenly he started off and began to run at random, making a noise with his lips like one shivering with severe cold.He threaded the street of Boudes, and the street of Soepo, crossed the Green Market, and reached the square of Khamon.

He now belonged to the priests; the slaves had just dispersed the crowd, and there was more room.Matho gazed round him and his eyes encountered Salammbo.

At the first step that he had taken she had risen; then, as he approached, she had involuntarily advanced by degrees to the edge of the terrace; and soon all external things were blotted out, and she saw only Matho.Silence fell in her soul,--one of those abysses wherein the whole world disappears beneath the pressure of a single thought, a memory, a look.This man who was walking towards her attracted her.

Excepting his eyes he had no appearance of humanity left; he was a long, perfectly red shape; his broken bonds hung down his thighs, but they could not be distinguished from the tendons of his wrists, which were laid quite bare; his mouth remained wide open; from his eye-sockets there darted flames which seemed to rise up to his hair;--and the wretch still walked on!

He reached the foot of the terrace.Salammbo was leaning over the balustrade; those frightful eyeballs were scanning her, and there rose within her a consciousness of all that he had suffered for her.

Although he was in his death agony she could see him once more kneeling in his tent, encircling her waist with his arms, and stammering out gentle words; she thirsted to feel them and hear them again; she did not want him to die! At this moment Matho gave a great start; she was on the point of shrieking aloud.He fell backwards and did not stir again.

Salammbo was borne back, nearly swooning, to her throne by the priests who flocked about her.They congratulated her; it was her work.All clapped their hands and stamped their feet, howling her name.

A man darted upon the corpse.Although he had no beard he had the cloak of a priest of Moloch on his shoulder, and in his belt that species of knife which they employed for cutting up the sacred meat, and which terminated, at the end of the handle, in a golden spatula.

He cleft Matho's breast with a single blow, then snatched out the heart and laid it upon the spoon; and Schahabarim, uplifting his arm, offered it to the sun.

The sun sank behind the waves; his rays fell like long arrows upon the red heart.As the beatings diminished the planet sank into the sea;and at the last palpitation it disappeared.

Then from the gulf to the lagoon, and from the isthmus to the pharos, in all the streets, on all the houses, and on all the temples, there was a single shout; sometimes it paused, to be again renewed; the buildings shook with it; Carthage was convulsed, as it were, in the spasm of Titanic joy and boundless hope.

Narr' Havas, drunk with pride, passed his left arm beneath Salammbo's waist in token of possession; and taking a gold patera in his right hand, he drank to the Genius of Carthage.

Salammbo rose like her husband, with a cup in her hand, to drink also.

She fell down again with her head lying over the back of the throne,--pale, stiff, with parted lips,--and her loosened hair hung to the ground.

Thus died Hamilcar's daughter for having touched the mantle of Tanith.

End