lions by the nostrils; a catapult would
not kill me! Oh! if you knew how I think of you in the midst of war!
Sometimes the memory of a gesture or of a fold of your garment suddenly
seizes me and entwines me like a net! I perceive your eyes in the flames
of the phalaricas and on the gilding of the shields! I hear your voice
in the sounding of the cymbals. I turn aside, but you are not there! and
I plunge again into the battle!"

He raised his arms whereon his veins crossed one another like ivy on
the branches of a tree. Sweat flowed down his breast between his square
muscles; and his breathing shook his sides with his bronze girdle all
garnished with thongs hanging down to his knees, which were firmer than
marble. Salammbo, who was accustomed to eunuchs, yielded to amazement at
the strength of this man. It was the chastisement of the goddess or the
influence of Moloch in motion around her in the five armies. She was
overwhelmed with lassitude; and she listened in a state of stupor to the
intermittent shouts of the sentinels as they answered one another.

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 bl