But men with head-dresses like the Sphinx’s, and furnished with great sticks, dashed into the crowd, striking right and left.  This was to drive back the slaves, who were curious to see their master, so that he might not be assailed by their numbers or inconvenienced by their smell.

Then they all threw themselves flat on the ground, crying: 

“Eye of Baal, may your house flourish!” And through these people as they lay thus on the ground in the avenue of cypress trees, Abdalonim, the Steward of the stewards, waving a white miter, advanced towards Hamilcar with a censer in his hand.

Salammbo was then coming down the galley staircases.  All her slave women followed her; and, at each of her steps, they also descended.  The heads of the Negresses formed big black spots on the line of the bands of the golden plates clasping the foreheads of the Roman women.  Others had silver arrows, emerald butterflies, or long bodkins set like suns in their hair.  Rings, clasps, necklaces, fringes, and bracelets shone amid the confusion of white, yellow, and blue garments; a rustling of light material became audible; the pattering of sandals might be heard together with the dull sound of naked feet as they were set down on the wood;—­and here and there a tall eunuch, head and shoulders above them, smiled with his face in air.  When the shouting of the men had subsided they hid their faces in their sleeves, and together uttered a strange cry like the howling of a she-wolf, and so frenzied and strident was it that it seemed to make the great ebony staircase, with its thronging women, vibrate from top to bottom like a lyre.

The wind lifted their veils, and the slender stems of the papyrus plant rocked gently.  It was the month of Schebaz and the depth of winter.  The flowering pomegranates swelled against the azure of the sky, and the sea disappeared through the branches with an island in the distance half lost in the mist.

Hamilcar stopped on perceiving Salammbo.  She had come to him after the death of several male children.  Moreover, the birth of daughters was considered a calamity in the religions of the Sun.  The gods had afterwards sent him a son; but he still felt something of the betrayal of his hope, and the shock, as it were, of the curse which he had uttered against her.  Salammbo, however, continued to advance.

Long bunches of various-coloured pearls fell from her ears to her shoulders, and as far as her elbows.  Her hair was crisped so as to simulate a cloud.  Round her neck she wore little quadrangular plates of gold, representing a woman between two rampant lions; and her costume was a complete reproduction of the equipment of the goddess.  Her broad-sleeved hyacinth robe fitted close to her figure, widening out below.  The vermilion on her lips gave additional whiteness to her teeth, and the antimony on her eyelids greater length to her eyes.  Her sandals, which were cut out in bird’s plumage, had very high heels, and she was extraordinarily pale, doubtless on account of the cold.