“But thou art a terrible mistress!—­Monsters, terrifying phantoms, and lying dreams come from thee; thine eyes devour the stones of buildings, and the apes are ever ill each time thou growest young again.

“Whither goest thou?  Why dost thou change thy forms continually?  Now, slender and curved thou glidest through space like a mastless galley; and then, amid the stars, thou art like a shepherd keeping his flock.  Shining and round, thou dost graze the mountain-tops like the wheel of a chariot.

“O Tanith! thou dost love me?  I have looked so much on thee!  But no! thou sailest through thine azure, and I—­I remain on the motionless earth.

“Taanach, take your nebal and play softly on the silver string, for my heart is sad!”

The slave lifted a sort of harp of ebony wood, taller than herself, and triangular in shape like a delta; she fixed the point in a crystal globe, and with both hands began to play.

The sounds followed one another hurried and deep, like the buzzing of bees, and with increasing sonorousness floated away into the night with the complaining of the waves, and the rustling of the great trees on the summit of the Acropolis.

“Hush!” cried Salammbo.

“What ails you, mistress?  The blowing of the breeze, the passing of a cloud, everything disquiets you just now!”

“I do not know,” she said.

“You are wearied with too long prayers!”

“Oh!  Tanaach, I would fain be dissolved in them like a flower in wine!”

“Perhaps it is the smoke of your perfumes?”

“No!” said Salammbo; “the spirit of the gods dwells in fragrant odours.”

Then the slave spoke to her of her father.  It was thought that he had gone towards the amber country, behind the pillars of Melkarth.  “But if he does not return,” she said, “you must nevertheless, since it was his will, choose a husband among the sons of the Ancients, and then your grief will pass away in a man’s arms.”

“Why?” asked the young girl.  All those that she had seen had horrified her with their fallow-deer laughter and their coarse limbs.

“Sometimes, Tanaach, from the depths of my being there exhale as it were hot fumes heavier than the vapours from a volcano.  Voices call me, a globe of fire rolls and mounts within my bosom, it stifles me, I am at the point of death; and then, something sweet, flowing from my brow to my feet, passes through my flesh—­it is a caress enfolding me, and I feel myself crushed as if some god were stretched upon me.  Oh! would that I could lose myself in the mists of the night, the waters of the fountains, the sap of the trees, that I could issue from my body, and be but a breath, or a ray, and glide, mount up to thee, O Mother!”

She raised her arms to their full length, arching her form, which in its long garment was as pale and light as the moon.  Then she fell back, panting, on the ivory couch; but Taanach passed an amber necklace with dolphin’s teeth about her neck to banish terrors, and Salammbo said in an almost stifled voice:  “Go and bring me Schahabarim.”