miles, their faces curiously
traced into a work of art, in the languid movements of a pantomimic
dance. The soul behind those eyes? the temperament under that at times
almost terrifying mask? Salammbo is as inarticulate for us as the
serpent, to whose drowsy beauty, capable of such sudden awakenings, hers
seems half akin; they move before us in a kind of hieratic pantomime, a
coloured, expressive thing, signifying nothing. Matho, maddened with
love, 'in an invincible stupor, like those who have drunk some draught
of which they are to die,' has the same somnambulistic life; the prey of
Venus, he has an almost literal insanity, which, as Flaubert reminds us,
is true to the ancient view of that passion. He is the only quite vivid
person in the book, and he lives with the intensity of a wild beast, a
life 'blinded alike' from every inner and outer interruption to one or
two fixed ideas. The others have their places in the picture, fall into
their attitudes naturally, remain so many coloured outlines for us. The
illusion is perfect; these people may not be the real people of history,
but at least they have no self-consciousness, no Christian tinge in
their minds.

'The metaphors are few, the epithets definite,' Flaubert tells us, of
his style in this book, where, as he says, he has sacrificed less 'to
the amplitude of the phrase and to the period,' than in _Madame Bovary_.
The movement here is in briefer steps, with a more earnest gravity,
without any of the engaging weakness of adjectives. The style is never
archaic, it is absolutely simple, the precise word being put always for
the precise thing; but it obtains a dignity, a historical remoteness, by
the large seriousness of its manner, the absence of modern ways of
thought, which, in _Madame Bovary_, bring with them an instinctively
modern cadence.

_Salammbo_ is written with the severity of history, but Flaubert notes
every detail visually, as a painter notes the details of natural things.
A slave is being flogged under a tree: Flaubert notes the movement of
the thong as it flies, and tells us: 'The thongs, as they whistled
through the air, sent the bark of the plane trees flying.' Before the
battle of the Macar, the Barbarians are awaiting the approach of the
Carthaginian army. First 'the Barbarians were surprised to see the
ground undulate in the distance.' Clouds of dust rise and whirl over
the desert, through which are seen glimpses of horns, and, as it seems,
wings