ten him Salammbo said to him in a plaintive voice:

"What have I done to you that you should desire my death?"

"Your death!"

She resumed:

"I saw you one evening by the light of my burning gardens amid fuming
cups and my slaughtered slaves, and your anger was so strong that you
bounded towards me and I was obliged to fly! Then terror entered into
Carthage. There were cries of the devastation of the towns, the burning
of the country-seats, the massacre of the soldiery; it was you who had
ruined them, it was you who had murdered them! I hate you! Your very
name gnaws me like remorse! You are execrated more than the plague, and
the Roman war! The provinces shudder at your fury, the furrows are full
of corpses! I have followed the traces of your fires as though I were
travelling behind Moloch!"

Matho leaped up; his heart was swelling with colossal pride; he was
raised to the stature of a god.

With quivering nostrils and clenched teeth she went on:

"As if your sacrilege were not enough, you came to me in my sleep
covered with the zaimph! Your words I did not understand; but I could
see that you wished to drag me to some terrible thing at the bottom of
an abyss."

Matho, writhing his arms, exclaimed:

"No! no! it was to give it to you! to restore it to you! It seemed to me
that the goddess had left her garment for you, and that it belonged to
you! In her temple or in your house, what does it matter? are you not
all-powerful, immaculate, radiant and beautiful even as Tanith?" And
with a look of boundless adoration he added:

"Unless perhaps you are Tanith?"

"I, Tanith!" said Salammbo to herself.

They left off speaking. The thunder rolled in the distance. Some sheep
bleated, frightened by the storm.

"Oh! come near!" he went on, "come near! fear nothing!

"Formerly I was only a soldier mingled with the common herd of the
Mercenaries, ay, and so meek that I used to carry wood on my back for
the others. Do I trouble myself about Carthage! The crowd of its people
move as though lost in the dust of your sandals, and all its treasures,
with the provinces, fleets, and islands, do not raise my envy like the
freshness of your lips and the turn of your shoulders. But I wanted to
throw down its walls that I might reach you to possess you! Moreover,
I was revenging myself in the meantime! At present I crush men like
shells, and I throw myself upon phalanxes; I put aside the sarissae with
my hands, I check the stal