h; the
offerings became constantly more numerous and more splendid. At last a
man who tottered, a man pale and hideous with terror, thrust forward
a child; then a little black mass was seen between the hands of the
colossus, and sank into the dark opening. The priests bent over the edge
of the great flagstone,--and a new song burst forth celebrating the joys
of death and of new birth into eternity.

The children ascended slowly, and as the smoke formed lofty eddies as
it escaped, they seemed at a distance to disappear in a cloud. Not
one stirred. Their wrists and ankles were tied, and the dark drapery
prevented them from seeing anything and from being recognised.

Hamilcar, in a red cloak, like the priests of Moloch, was beside the
Baal, standing upright in front of the great toe of its right foot. When
the fourteenth child was brought every one could see him make a great
gesture of horror. But he soon resumed his former attitude, folded his
arms, and looked upon the ground. The high pontiff stood on the other
side of the statue as motionless as he. His head, laden with an Assyrian
mitre, was bent, and he was watching the gold plate on his breast; it
was covered with fatidical stones, and the flame mirrored in it formed
irisated lights. He grew pale and dismayed. Hamilcar bent his brow; and
they were both so near the funeral-pile that the hems of their cloaks
brushed it as they rose from time to time.

The brazen arms were working more quickly. They paused no longer. Every
time that a child was placed in them the priests of Moloch spread
out their hands upon him to burden him with the crimes of the people,
vociferating: "They are not men but oxen!" and the multitude round
about repeated: "Oxen! oxen!" The devout exclaimed: "Lord! eat!" and
the priests of Proserpine, complying through terror with the needs of
Carthage, muttered the Eleusinian formula: "Pour out rain! bring forth!"

The victims, when scarcely at the edge of the opening, disappeared like
a drop of water on a red-hot plate, and white smoke rose amid the great
scarlet colour.

Nevertheless, the appetite of the god was not appeased. He ever wished
for more. In order to furnish him with a larger supply, the victims were
piled up on his hands with a big chain above them which kept them in
their place. Some devout persons had at the beginning wished to count
them, to see whether their number corresponded with the days of
the solar year; but others were brou