“Formerly I was only a soldier mingled with the common herd of the Mercenaries, ay, and so meek that I used to carry wood on my back for the others.  Do I trouble myself about Carthage!  The crowd of its people move as though lost in the dust of your sandals, and all its treasures, with the provinces, fleets, and islands, do not raise my envy like the freshness of your lips and the turn of your shoulders.  But I wanted to throw down its walls that I might reach you to possess you!  Moreover, I was revenging myself in the meantime!  At present I crush men like shells, and I throw myself upon phalanxes; I put aside the sarissae with my hands, I check the stallions 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 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!”