The moon was rising just above the waves, and on the town which
was still wrapped in darkness there glittered white and luminous
specks:—the pole of a chariot, a dangling rag of linen, the corner of
a wall, or a golden necklace on the bosom of a god. The glass balls on
the roofs of the temples beamed like great diamonds here and there.
But ill-defined ruins, piles of black earth, and gardens formed deeper
masses in the gloom, and below Malqua fishermen’s nets stretched
from one house to another like gigantic bats spreading their wings. The
grinding of the hydraulic wheels which conveyed water to the highest
storys of the palaces, was no longer heard; and the camels, lying
ostrich fashion on their stomachs, rested peacefully in the middle of
the terraces. The porters were asleep in the streets on the thresholds
of the houses; the shadows of the colossuses stretched across the
deserted squares; occasionally in the distance the smoke of a still
burning sacrifice would escape through the bronze tiling, and the heavy
breeze would waft the odours of aromatics blended with the scent of the
sea and the exhalation from the sun-heated walls. The motionless waves
shone around Carthage, for the moon was spreading her light at once upon
the mountain-circled gulf and upon the lake of Tunis, where flamingoes
formed long rose-coloured lines amid the banks of sand, while further
on beneath the catacombs the great salt lagoon shimmered like a piece
of silver. The blue vault of heaven sank on the horizon in one direction
into the dustiness of the plains, and in the other into the mists of the
sea, and on the summit of the Acropolis, the pyramidal cypress trees,
fringing the temple of Eschmoun, swayed murmuring like the regular waves
that beat slowly along the mole beneath the ramparts.
Salammbô ascended to the terrace of her palace, supported by a female
slave who carried an iron dish filled with live coals.
In the middle of the terrace there was a small ivory bed covered
with lynx skins, and cushions made with the feathers of the parrot, a
fatidical animal consecrated to the gods; and at the four corners rose
four long perfuming-pans filled with nard, incense, cinnamomum, and
myrrh. The slave lit the perfumes. Salammbô looked at the polar star;
she slowly saluted the four points of heaven, and knelt down on the
ground in the azure dust which was strewn with golden stars in imitation
of the firmament. Then with both elbows against her sides, her fore-arms
straight and her hands open, she threw back her head beneath the rays of
the moon, and said:
“O Rabetna!—Baalet!—Tanith!” and her voice was lengthened in
a plaintive fashion as if calling to some one. “Anaïtis! Astarte!
Derceto! Astoreth! Mylitta! Athara! Elissa! Tiratha!—By the hidden
symbols, by the resounding sistra,—by the furrows of the earth,—by
the eternal silence and by the eternal fruitfulness,—mistress of the
gloomy sea and of the azure shores, O Queen of the watery world, all
hail!”
She swayed her whole body twice or thrice, and then cast herself face
downwards in the dust with both arms outstretched.
But the slave nimbly raised her, for according to the rites someone must
catch the suppliant at the moment of his prostration; this told him
that the gods accepted him, and Salammbô’s nurse never failed in this
pious duty.
Some merchants from Darytian Gætulia had brought her to Carthage when
quite young, and after her enfranchisement she would not forsake her old
masters, as was shown by her right ear, which was pierced with a large
hole. A petticoat of many-coloured stripes fitted closely on her hips,
and fell to her ankles, where two tin rings clashed together. Her
somewhat flat face was yellow like her tunic. Silver bodkins of great
length formed a sun behind her head. She wore a coral button on the
nostril, and she stood beside the bed more erect than a Hermes, and with
her eyelids cast down.
Salammbô walked to the edge of the terrace; her eyes swept the horizon
for an instant, and then were lowered upon the sleeping town, while the
sigh that she heaved swelled her bosom, and gave an undulating movement
to the whole length of the long white simar which hung without clasp or
girdle about her. Her curved and painted sandals were hidden beneath
a heap of emeralds, and a net of purple thread was filled with her
disordered hair.
But she raised her head to gaze upon the moon, and murmured, mingling
her speech with fragments of hymns:
“How lightly turnest thou, supported by the impalpable ether! It
brightens about thee, and ’tis the stir of thine agitation that
distributes the winds and fruitful dews. According as thou dost wax
and 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 shells
to swell, the wine to bubble, and the corpse to putrefy! Thou formest
the pearls at the bottom of the sea!
“And every germ, O goddess! ferments in the dark depths of thy
moisture.
“When thou appearest, quietness is spread abroad upon the earth; the
flowers close, the waves are soothed, wearied man stretches his breast
toward thee, and the world with its oceans and mountains looks at
itself 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 of
buildings, 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 a
chariot.
“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 motionless
earth.
“Taanach, take your nebal and play softly on the silver string, for my
heart 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 crystal
globe, and with both hands began to play.
The sounds followed one another hurried and deep, like the buzzing of
bees, and with increasing sonorousness floated away into the night with
the complaining of the waves, and the rustling of the great trees on the
summit of the Acropolis.
“Hush!” cried Salammbô.
“What ails you, mistress? The blowing of the breeze, the passing of a
cloud, 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 in
wine!”
“Perhaps it is the smoke of your perfumes?”
“No!” said Salammbô; “the spirit of the gods dwells in fragrant
odours.”
Then the slave spoke to her of her father. It was thought that he had
gone towards the amber country, behind the pillars of Melkarth. “But
if he does not return,” she said, “you must nevertheless, since it
was his will, choose a husband among the sons of the Ancients, and then
your grief will pass away in a man’s arms.”
“Why?” asked the young girl. All those that she had seen had
horrified her with their fallow-deer laughter and their coarse limbs.
“Sometimes, Tanaach, from the depths of my being there exhale as it
were 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 at
the point of death; and then, something sweet, flowing from my brow to
my feet, passes through my flesh—it is a caress enfolding me, and I
feel myself crushed as if some god were stretched upon me. Oh! would
that I could lose myself in the mists of the night, the waters of the
fountains, the sap of the trees, that I could issue from my body, and be
but 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 in
its 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 with
dolphin’s teeth about her neck to banish terrors, and Salammbô said
in 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 was
reserving her for some alliance that might serve his political ends; so
that Salammbô lived alone in the midst of the palace. Her mother was
long since dead.
She had grown up with abstinences, fastings and purifications, always
surrounded by grave and exquisite things, her body saturated with
perfumes, and her soul filled with prayers. She had never tasted wine,
nor eaten meat, nor touched an unclean animal, nor set her heels in the
house of death.
She knew nothing of obscene images, for as each god was manifested
in different forms, the same principle often received the witness
of contradictory cults, and Salammbô worshipped the goddess in her
sidereal presentation. An influence had descended upon the maiden from
the moon; when the planet passed diminishing away, Salammbô grew weak.
She languished the whole day long, and revived at evening. During an
eclipse she nearly died.
But Rabetna, in jealousy, revenged herself for the virginity withdrawn
from her sacrifices, and she tormented Salammbô with possessions, all
the stronger for being vague, which were spread through this belief and
excited by it.
Unceasingly was Hamilcar’s daughter disquieted about Tanith. She had
learned her adventures, her travels, and all her names, which she would
repeat without their having any distinct signification for her. In
order to penetrate into the depths of her dogma, she wished to become
acquainted, in the most secret part of the temple, with the old idol in
the magnificent mantle, whereon depended the destinies of Carthage, for
the 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 his
virtue, and in a measure to rule him.
But Salammbô turned around. She had recognised the sound of the golden
bells which Schahabarim wore at the hem of his garment.
He ascended the staircases; then at the threshold of the terrace he
stopped and folded his arms.
His sunken eyes shone like the lamps of a sepulchre; his long thin body
floated in its linen robe which was weighted by the bells, the latter
alternating with balls of emeralds at his heels. He had feeble limbs, an
oblique skull and a pointed chin; his skin seemed cold to the touch, and
his yellow face, which was deeply furrowed with wrinkles, was as if it
contracted in a longing, in an everlasting grief.
He was the high priest of Tanith, and it was he who had educated
Salammbô.
“Speak!” he said. “What will you?”
“I hoped—you had almost promised me—” She stammered and was
confused; then suddenly: “Why do you despise me? what have I forgotten
in the rites? You are my master, and you told me that no one was so
accomplished in the things pertaining to the goddess as I; but there are
some 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 climbed
the steps of Eschmoun, god of the planets and intelligences; I have
slept beneath the golden olive of Melkarth, patron of the Tyrian
colonies; I have pushed open the doors of Baal-Khamon, the enlightener
and fertiliser; I have sacrificed to the subterranean Kabiri, to the
gods of woods, winds, rivers and mountains; but, can you understand?
they are all too far away, too high, too insensible, while she—I feel
her mingled in my life; she fills my soul, and I quiver with inward
startings, as though she were leaping in order to escape. Methinks I am
about to hear her voice, and see her face, lightnings dazzle me and then
I sink back again into the darkness.”
Schahabarim was silent. She entreated him with suppliant looks. At
last he made a sign for the dismissal of the slave, who was not of
Chanaanitish race. Taanach disappeared, and Schahabarim, raising one arm
in the air, began:
“Before the gods darkness alone was, and a breathing stirred dull
and indistinct as the conscience of a man in a dream. It contracted,
creating Desire and Cloud, and from Desire and Cloud there issued
primitive Matter. This was a water, muddy, black, icy and deep. It
contained senseless monsters, incoherent portions of the forms to be
born, which are painted on the walls of the sanctuaries.
“Then Matter condensed. It became an egg. It burst. One half formed
the earth and the other the firmament. Sun, moon, winds and clouds
appeared, and at the crash of the thunder intelligent creatures awoke.
Then Eschmoun spread himself in the starry sphere; Khamon beamed in
the sun; Melkarth thrust him with his arms behind Gades; the Kabiri
descended beneath the volcanoes, and Rabetna like a nurse bent over the
world 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 from
sublimer prospects; but the maiden’s desire kindled again at his last
words, 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 although
she is everywhere diffused, it is here that she dwells, beneath the
sacred veil.”
“O father!” cried Salammbô, “I shall see her, shall I not? you
will bring me to her! I had long been hesitating; I am devoured with
curiosity 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 Baals
are unveiled to us alone who are men in understanding and women in
weakness. Your desire is sacrilege; be satisfied with the knowledge that
you possess!”
She fell upon her knees placing two fingers against her ears in token of
repentance; and crushed by the priest’s words, and filled at once with
anger against him, with terror and humiliation, she burst into sobs.
Schahabarim remained erect, and more insensible than the stones of the
terrace. He looked down upon her quivering at his feet, and felt a kind
of joy on seeing her suffer for his divinity whom he himself could not
wholly 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 like
slight mists trailing along the ground; then these became a great
curtain of dust extending perpendicularly, and, amid the whirlwinds of
the thronging mass, dromedaries’ heads, lances and shields appeared.
It was the army of the Barbarians advancing upon Carthage.