ood! 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! I
abandon 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 garme