erced by
numberless apertures, and if the head were raised the stars might be
seen. All round the wall rush baskets were heaped up with the first
fruits of adolescence in the shape of beards and curls of hair; and in
the centre of the circular apartment the body of a woman issued from a
sheath which was covered with breasts. Fat, bearded, and with eyelids
downcast, she looked as though she were smiling, while her hands were
crossed upon the lower part of her big body, which was polished by the
kisses of the crowd.

Then they found themselves again in the open air in a transverse
corridor, wherein there was an altar of small dimensions leaning against
an ivory door. There was no further passage; the priests alone could
open it; for the temple was not a place of meeting for the multitude,
but the private abode of a divinity.

"The enterprise is impossible," said Matho. "You had not thought of
this! Let us go back!" Spendius was examining the walls.

He wanted the veil, not because he had confidence in its virtue
(Spendius believed only in the Oracle), but because he was persuaded
that the Carthaginians would be greatly dismayed on seeing themselves
deprived of it. They walked all round behind in order to find some
outlet.

Aedicules of different shapes were visible beneath clusters of
turpentine trees. Here and there rose a stone phallus, and large stags
roamed peacefully about, spurning the fallen fir-cones with their cloven
hoofs.

But they retraced their steps between two long galleries which ran
parallel to each other. There were small open cells along their sides,
and tabourines and cymbals hung against their cedar columns from top to
bottom. Women were sleeping stretched on mats outside the cells. Their
bodies were greasy with unguents, and exhaled an odour of spices and
extinguished perfuming-pans; while they were so covered with tattooings,
necklaces, rings, vermilion, and antimony that, but for the motion of
their breasts, they might have been taken for idols as they lay thus on
the ground. There were lotus-trees encircling a fountain in which fish
like Salammbo's were swimming; and then in the background, against the
wall of the temple, spread a vine, the branches of which were of glass
and the grape-bunches of emerald, the rays from the precious stones
making a play of light through the painted columns upon the sleeping
faces.

Matho felt suffocated in the warm atmosphere pressed down upon him by
the c