“I know,” said Matho.

Spendius resumed:  “It is itself divine, for it forms part of her.  The gods reside where their images are.  It is because Carthage possesses it that Carthage is powerful.”  Then leaning over to his ear:  “I have brought you with me to carry it off!”

Matho recoiled in horror.  “Begone! look for some one else!  I will not help you in this execrable crime!”

“But Tanith is your enemy,” retorted Spendius; “she is persecuting you and you are dying through her wrath.  You will be revenged upon her.  She will obey you, and you will become almost immortal and invincible.”

Matho bent his head.  Spendius continued: 

“We should succumb; the army would be annihilated of itself.  We have neither flight, nor succour, nor pardon to hope for!  What chastisement from the gods can you be afraid of since you will have their power in your own hands?  Would you rather die on the evening of a defeat, in misery beneath the shelter of a bush, or amid the outrages of the populace and the flames of funeral piles?  Master, one day you will enter Carthage among the colleges of the pontiffs, who will kiss your sandals; and if the veil of Tanith weighs upon you still, you will reinstate it in its temple.  Follow me! come and take it.”

Matho was consumed by a terrible longing.  He would have liked to possess the veil while refraining from the sacrilege.  He said to himself that perhaps it would not be necessary to take it in order to monopolise its virtue.  He did not go to the bottom of his thought but stopped at the boundary, where it terrified him.

“Come on!” he said; and they went off with rapid strides, side by side, and without speaking.

The ground rose again, and the dwellings were near.  They turned again into the narrow streets amid the darkness.  The strips of esparto-grass with which the doors were closed, beat against the walls.  Some camels were ruminating in a square before heaps of cut grass.  Then they passed beneath a gallery covered with foliage.  A pack of dogs were barking.  But suddenly the space grew wider and they recognised the western face of the Acropolis.  At the foot of Byrsa there stretched a long black mass:  it was the temple of Tanith, a whole made up of monuments and galleries, courts and fore-courts, and bounded by a low wall of dry stones.  Spendius and Matho leaped over it.

This first barrier enclosed a wood of plane-trees as a precaution against plague and infection in the air.  Tents were scattered here and there, in which, during the daytime, depilatory pastes, perfumes, garments, moon-shaped cakes, and images of the goddess with representations of the temple hollowed out in blocks of alabaster, were on sale.

They had nothing to fear, for on nights when the planet did not appear, all rites were suspended; nevertheless Matho slackened his speed, and stopped before the three ebony steps leading to the second enclosure.