第73章
The flames of the lamp kindled in the squalls of hot air.There came at times broad lightning flashes; then the darkness increased; and she could only see Matho's eyeballs like two coals in the night.However, she felt that a fatality was surrounding her, that she had reached a supreme and irrevocable moment, and making an effort she went up again towards the zaimph and raised her hands to seize it.
"What are you doing?" exclaimed Matho.
"I am going back to Carthage," she placidly replied.
He advanced folding his arms and with so terrible a look that her heels were immediately nailed, as it were, to the spot.
"Going back to Carthage!" He stammered, and, grinding his teeth, repeated:
"Going back to Carthage! Ah! you came to take the zaimph, to conquer me, and then disappear! No, no! you belong to me! and no one now shall tear you from here! Oh! I have not forgotten the insolence of your large tranquil eyes, and how you crushed me with the haughtiness of your beauty! 'Tis my turn now! You are my captive, my slave, my servant! Call, if you like, on your father and his army, the Ancients, the rich, and your whole accursed people! I am the master of three hundred thousand soldiers! I will go and seek them in Lusitania, in the Gauls, and in the depths of the desert, and I will overthrow your town and burn all its temples; the triremes shall float on the waves of blood! I will not have a house, a stone, or a palm tree remaining!
And if men fail me I will draw the bears from the mountains and urge on the lions! Seek not to fly or I kill you!"Pale and with clenched fists he quivered like a harp whose strings are about to burst.Suddenly sobs stifled him, and he sank down upon his hams.
"Ah! forgive me! I am a scoundrel, and viler than scorpions, than mire and dust! Just now while you were speaking your breath passed across my face, and I rejoiced like a dying man who drinks lying flat on the edge of a stream.Crush me, if only I feel your feet! curse me, if only I hear your voice! Do not go! have pity! I love you! I love you!"He was on his knees on the ground before her; and he encircled her form with both his arms, his head thrown back, and his hands wandering; the gold discs hanging from his ears gleamed upon his bronzed neck; big tears rolled in his eyes like silver globes; he sighed caressingly, and murmured vague words lighter than a breeze and sweet as a kiss.
Salammbo was invaded by a weakness in which she lost all consciousness of herself.Something at once inward and lofty, a command from the gods, obliged her to yield herself; clouds uplifted her, and she fell back swooning upon the bed amid the lion's hair.The zaimph fell, and enveloped her; she could see Matho's face bending down above her breast.
"Moloch, thou burnest me!" and the soldier's kisses, more devouring than flames, covered her; she was as though swept away in a hurricane, taken in the might of the sun.
He kissed all her fingers, her arms, her feet, and the long tresses of her hair from one end to the other.
"Carry it off," he said, "what do I care? take me away with it! Iabandon the army! I renounce everything! Beyond Gades, twenty days'
journey into the sea, you come to an island covered with gold dust, verdure, and birds.On the mountains large flowers filled with smoking perfumes rock like eternal censers; in the citron trees, which are higher than cedars, milk-coloured serpents cause the fruit to fall upon the turf with the diamonds in their jaws; the air is so mild that it keeps you from dying.Oh! I shall find it, you will see.We shall live in crystal grottoes cut out at the foot of the hills.No one dwells in it yet, or I shall become the king of the country."He brushed the dust off her cothurni; he wanted her to put a quarter of a pomegranate between her lips; he heaped up garments behind her head to make a cushion for her.He sought for means to serve her, and to humble himself, and he even spread the zaimph over her feet as if it were a mere rug.
"Have you still," he said, "those little gazelle's horns on which your necklaces hang? You will give them to me! I love them!" For he spoke as if the war were finished, and joyful laughs broke from him.The Mercenaries, Hamilcar, every obstacle had now disappeared.The moon was gliding between two clouds.They could see it through an opening in the tent."Ah, what nights have I spent gazing at her! she seemed to me like a veil that hid your face; you would look at me through her; the memory of you was mingled with her beams; then I could no longer distinguish you!" And with his head between her breasts he wept copiously.
"And this," she thought, "is the formidable man who makes Carthage tremble!"He fell asleep.Then disengaging herself from his arm she put one foot to the ground, and she perceived that her chainlet was broken.
The maidens of the great families were accustomed to respect these shackles as something that was almost religious, and Salammbo, blushing, rolled the two pieces of the golden chain around her ankles.
Carthage, Megara, her house, her room, and the country that she had passed through, whirled in tumultuous yet distinct images through her memory.But an abyss had yawned and thrown them far back to an infinite distance from her.
The storm was departing; drops of water splashing rarely, one by one, made the tent-roof shake.
Matho slept like a drunken man, stretched on his side, and with one arm over the edge of the couch.His band of pearls was raised somewhat, and uncovered his brow; his teeth were parted in a smile;they shone through his black beard, and there was a silent and almost outrageous gaiety in his half-closed eyelids.
Salammbo looked at him motionless, her head bent and her hands crossed.