edar 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