He swallowed galbanum, seseli, and
viper's venom which freezes the heart; Negro women, singing barbarous
words in the moonlight, pricked the skin of his forehead with golden
stylets; he loaded himself with necklaces and charms; he invoked in
turn Baal-Khamon, Moloch, the seven Kabiri, Tanith, and the Venus of
the Greeks. He engraved a name upon a copper plate, and buried it in the
sand at the threshold of his tent. Spendius used to hear him groaning
and talking to himself.
One night he went in.
Matho, as naked as a corpse, was lying on a lion's skin flat on his
stomach, with his face in both his hands; a hanging lamp lit up his
armour, which was hooked on to the tent-pole above his head.
"You are suffering?" said the slave to him. "What is the matter with
you? Answer me?" And he shook him by the shoulder calling him several
times, "Master! master!"
At last Matho lifted large troubled eyes towards him.
"Listen!" he said in a low voice, and with a finger on his lips. "It is
the wrath of the Gods! Hamilcar's daughter pursues me! I am afraid of
her, Spendius!" He pressed himself close against his breast like a child
terrified by a phantom. "Speak to me! I am sick! I want to get well! I
have tried everything! But you, you perhaps know some stronger gods, or
some resistless invocation?"
"For what purpose?" asked Spendius.
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