“O Rabetna!—Baalet!—Tanith!”
and her voice was lengthened in a plaintive fashion
as if calling to some one. “Anaitis!
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 Salammbo’s nurse never
failed in this pious duty.
Some merchants from Darytian Gaetulia 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.
Salammbo 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. Salammbo went on:
