“O Rabetna!—­Baalet!—­Tanith!” and her voice was lengthened in a plaintive fashion as if calling to some one.  “Anaitis!  Astarte!  Derceto!  Astoreth!  Mylitta!  Athara!  Elissa!  Tiratha!—­By the hidden symbols, by the resounding sistra,—­by the furrows of the earth,—­by the eternal silence and by the eternal fruitfulness,—­mistress of the gloomy sea and of the azure shores, O Queen of the watery world, all hail!”

She swayed her whole body twice or thrice, and then cast herself face downwards in the dust with both arms outstretched.

But the slave nimbly raised her, for according to the rites someone must catch the suppliant at the moment of his prostration; this told him that the gods accepted him, and Salammbo’s nurse never failed in this pious duty.

Some merchants from Darytian Gaetulia had brought her to Carthage when quite young, and after her enfranchisement she would not forsake her old masters, as was shown by her right ear, which was pierced with a large hole.  A petticoat of many-coloured stripes fitted closely on her hips, and fell to her ankles, where two tin rings clashed together.  Her somewhat flat face was yellow like her tunic.  Silver bodkins of great length formed a sun behind her head.  She wore a coral button on the nostril, and she stood beside the bed more erect than a Hermes, and with her eyelids cast down.

Salammbo walked to the edge of the terrace; her eyes swept the horizon for an instant, and then were lowered upon the sleeping town, while the sigh that she heaved swelled her bosom, and gave an undulating movement to the whole length of the long white simar which hung without clasp or girdle about her.  Her curved and painted sandals were hidden beneath a heap of emeralds, and a net of purple thread was filled with her disordered hair.

But she raised her head to gaze upon the moon, and murmured, mingling her speech with fragments of hymns: 

“How lightly turnest thou, supported by the impalpable ether!  It brightens about thee, and ’tis the stir of thine agitation that distributes the winds and fruitful dews.  According as thou dost wax and wane the eyes of cats and spots of panthers lengthen or grow short.  Wives shriek thy name in the pangs of childbirth!  Thou makest the shells to swell, the wine to bubble, and the corpse to putrefy!  Thou formest the pearls at the bottom of the sea!

“And every germ, O goddess! ferments in the dark depths of thy moisture.

“When thou appearest, quietness is spread abroad upon the earth; the flowers close, the waves are soothed, wearied man stretches his breast toward thee, and the world with its oceans and mountains looks at itself in thy face as in a mirror.  Thou art white, gentle, luminous, immaculate, helping, purifying, serene!”

The crescent of the moon was then over the mountain of the Hot Springs, in the hollow formed by its two summits, on the other side of the gulf.  Below it there was a little star, and all around it a pale circle.  Salammbo went on: