e outside the mole, shone like a dyke of
diamonds; everywhere there was a sense of the restoration of order, the
beginning of a new existence, and the diffusion of vast happiness: it
was the day of Salammbo's marriage with the King of the Numidians.

On the terrace of the temple of Khamon there were three long tables
laden with gigantic plate, at which the priests, Ancients, and the rich
were to sit, and there was a fourth and higher one for Hamilcar, Narr'
Havas, and Salammbo; for as she had saved her country by the restoration
of the zaimph, the people turned her wedding day into a national
rejoicing, and were waiting in the square below till she should appear.

But their impatience was excited by another and more acrid longing:
Matho's death has been promised for the ceremony.

It had been proposed at first to flay him alive, to pour lead into his
entrails, to kill him with hunger; he should be tied to a tree, and
an ape behind him should strike him on the head with a stone; he had
offended Tanith, and the cynocephaluses of Tanith should avenge her.
Others were of opinion that he should be led about on a dromedary after
linen wicks, dipped in oil, had been inserted in his body in several
places;--and they took pleasure in the thought of the large animal
wandering through the streets with this man writhing beneath the fires
like a candelabrum blown about by the wind.

But what citizens should be charged with his torture, and why disappoint
the rest? They would have liked a kind of death in which the whole
town might take part, in which every hand, every weapon, everything
Carthaginian, to the very paving-stones in the streets and the waves in
the gulf, could rend him, and crush him, and annihilate him. Accordingly
the Ancients decided that he should go from his prison to the square of
Khamon without any escort, and with his arms fastened to his back; it
was forbidden to strike him to the heart, in order that he might live
the longer; to put out his eyes, so that he might see the torture
through; to hurl anything against his person, or to lay more than three
fingers upon him at a time.

Although he was not to appear until the end of the day, the people
sometimes fancied that he could be seen, and the crowd would rush
towards the Acropolis, and empty the streets, to return with lengthened
murmurings. Some people had remained standing in the same place since
the day before, and they would call on one another from a d