第27章

"The enterprise is impossible," said Matho."You had not thought of this! Let us go back!" Spendius was examining the walls.

He wanted the veil, not because he had confidence in its virtue (Spendius believed only in the Oracle), but because he was persuaded that the Carthaginians would be greatly dismayed on seeing themselves deprived of it.They walked all round behind in order to find some outlet.

Aedicules of different shapes were visible beneath clusters of turpentine trees.Here and there rose a stone phallus, and large stags roamed peacefully about, spurning the fallen fir-cones with their cloven hoofs.

But they retraced their steps between two long galleries which ran parallel to each other.There were small open cells along their sides, and tabourines and cymbals hung against their cedar columns from top to bottom.Women were sleeping stretched on mats outside the cells.

Their bodies were greasy with unguents, and exhaled an odour of spices and extinguished perfuming-pans; while they were so covered with tattooings, necklaces, rings, vermilion, and antimony that, but for the motion of their breasts, they might have been taken for idols as they lay thus on the ground.There were lotus-trees encircling a fountain in which fish like Salammbo's were swimming; and then in the background, against the wall of the temple, spread a vine, the branches of which were of glass and the grape-bunches of emerald, the rays from the precious stones making a play of light through the painted columns upon the sleeping faces.

Matho felt suffocated in the warm atmosphere pressed down upon him by the cedar partitions.All these symbols of fecundation, these perfumes, radiations, and breathings overwhelmed him.Through all the mystic dazzling he kept thinking of Salammbo.She became confused with the goddess herself, and his loved unfolded itself all the more, like the great lotus-plants blooming upon the depths of the waters.

Spendius was calculating how much money he would have made in former days by the sale of these women; and with a rapid glance he estimated the weight of the golden necklaces as he passed by.

The temple was impenetrable on this side as on the other, and they returned behind the first chamber.While Spendius was searching and ferreting, Matho was prostrate before the door supplicating Tanith.He besought her not to permit the sacrilege, and strove to soften her with caressing words, such as are used to an angry person.

Spendius noticed a narrow aperture above the door.

"Rise!" he said to Matho, and he made him stand erect with his back against the wall.Placing one foot in his hands, and then the other upon his head, he reached up to the air-hole, made his way into it and disappeared.Then Matho felt a knotted cord--that one which Spendius had rolled around his body before entering the cisterns--fall upon his shoulders, and bearing upon it with both hands he soon found himself by the side of the other in a large hall filled with shadow.

Such an attempt was something extraordinary.The inadequacy of the means for preventing it was a sufficient proof that it was considered impossible.The sanctuaries were protected by terror more than by their walls.Matho expected to die at every step.

However a light was flickering far back in the darkness, and they went up to it.It was a lamp burning in a shell on the pedestal of a statue which wore the cap of the Kabiri.Its long blue robe was strewn with diamond discs, and its heels were fastened to the ground by chains which sank beneath the pavement.Matho suppressed a cry."Ah! there she is! there she is!" he stammered out.Spendius took up the lamp in order to light himself.

"What an impious man you are!" murmured Matho, following him nevertheless.

The apartment which they entered had nothing in it but a black painting representing another woman.Her legs reached to the top of the wall, and her body filled the entire ceiling; a huge egg hung by a thread from her navel, and she fell head downwards upon the other wall, reaching as far as the level of the pavement, which was touched by her pointed fingers.

They drew a hanging aside, in order to go on further; but the wind blew and the light went out.

Then they wandered about, lost in the complications of the architecture.Suddenly they felt something strangely soft beneath their feet.Sparks crackled and leaped; they were walking in fire.

Spendius touched the ground and perceived that it was carefully carpeted with lynx skins; then it seemed to them that a big cord, wet, cold, and viscous, was gliding between their legs.Through some fissures cut in the wall there fell thin white rays, and they advanced by this uncertain light.At last they distinguished a large black serpent.It darted quickly away and disappeared.

"Let us fly!" exclaimed Matho."It is she! I feel her; she is coming.""No, no," replied Spendius, "the temple is empty."Then a dazzling light made them lower their eyes.Next they perceived all around them an infinite number of beasts, lean, panting, with bristling claws, and mingled together one above another in a mysterious and terrifying confusion.There were serpents with feet, and bulls with wings, fishes with human heads were devouring fruit, flowers were blooming in the jaws of crocodiles, and elephants with uplifted trunks were sailing proudly through the azure like eagles.

Their incomplete or multiplied limbs were distended with terrible exertion.As they thrust out their tongues they looked as though they would fain give forth their souls; and every shape was to be found among them as if the germ-receptacle had been suddenly hatched and had burst, emptying itself upon the walls of the hall.