Matho wept thus in the darkness; the Barbarians were sleeping.  Spendius, as he looked at him, recalled the young men who once used to entreat him with golden cases in their hands, when he led his herd of courtesans through the towns; a feeling of pity moved him, and he said—­

“Be strong, my master!  Summon your will, and beseech the gods no more, for they turn not aside at the cries of men!  Weeping like a coward!  And you are not humiliated that a woman can cause you so much suffering?”

“Am I a child?” said Matho.  “Do you think that I am moved by their faces and songs?  We kept them at Drepanum to sweep out our stables.  I have embraced them amid assaults, beneath falling ceilings, and while the catapult was still vibrating!—­But she, Spendius, she!—­”

The slave interrupted him: 

“If she were not Hanno’s daughter—­”

“No!” cried Matho.  “She has nothing in common with the daughters of other men!  Have you seen her great eyes beneath her great eyebrows, like suns beneath triumphal arches?  Think:  when she appeared all the torches grew pale.  Her naked breast shone here and there through the diamonds of her necklace; behind her you perceived as it were the odour of a temple, and her whole being emitted something that was sweeter than wine and more terrible than death.  She walked, however, and then she stopped.”

He remained gaping with his head cast down and his eyeballs fixed.

“But I want her!  I need her!  I am dying for her!  I am transported with frenzied joy at the thought of clasping her in my arms, and yet I hate her, Spendius!  I should like to beat her!  What is to be done?  I have a mind to sell myself and become her slave!  You have been that!  You were able to get sight of her; speak to me of her!  Every night she ascends to the terrace of her palace, does she not?  Ah! the stones must quiver beneath her sandals, and the stars bend down to see her!”

He fell back in a perfect frenzy, with a rattling in his throat like a wounded bull.

Then Matho sang:  “He pursued into the forest the female monster, whose tail undulated over the dead leaves like a silver brook.”  And with lingering tones he imitated Salammbo’s voice, while his outspread hands were held like two light hands on the strings of a lyre.

To all the consolations offered by Spendius, he repeated the same words; their nights were spent in these wailings and exhortations.

Matho sought to drown his thoughts in wine.  After his fits of drunkenness he was more melancholy still.  He tried to divert himself at huckle-bones, and lost the gold plates of his necklace one by one.  He had himself taken to the servants of the Goddess; but he came down the hill sobbing, like one returning from a funeral.

Spendius, on the contrary, became more bold and gay.  He was to be seen in the leafy taverns discoursing in the midst of the soldiers.  He mended old cuirasses.  He juggled with daggers.  He went and gathered herbs in the fields for the sick.  He was facetious, dexterous, full of invention and talk; the Barbarians grew accustomed to his services, and he came to be loved by them.