From the position of the sun above the moon he inferred the predominance
of Baal, of whom the planet itself is but the reflection and figure;
moreover, all that he saw in terrestrial things compelled him to
recognise the male exterminating principle as supreme. And then he
secretly charged Rabbet with the misfortune of his life. Was it not for
her that the grand-pontiff had once advanced amid the tumult of cymbals,
and with a patera of boiling water taken from him his future virility?
And he followed with a melancholy gaze the men who were disappearing
with the priestesses in the depths of the turpentine trees.
His days were spent in inspecting the censers, the gold vases, the
tongs, the rakes for the ashes of the altar, and all the robes of the
statues down to the bronze bodkin that served to curl the hair of an old
Tanith in the third aedicule near the emerald vine. At the same hours he
would raise the great hangings of the same swinging doors; would remain
with his arms outspread in the same attitude; or prayed prostrate on the
same flag-stones, while around him a people of priests moved barefooted
through the passages filled with an eternal twilight.
But Salammbo was in the barrenness of his life like a flower in the
cleft of a sepulchre.
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