Their tears compose its humidity; 'tis a
dark abode full of mire, and wreck, and tempest."
She asked what would become of her then.
"At first you will languish as light as a vapour hovering upon the
waves; and after more lengthened ordeals and agonies, you will pass into
the forces of the sun, the very source of Intelligence!"
He did not speak, however, of Rabbet. Salammbo imagined that it was
through some shame for his vanquished goddess, and calling her by a
common name which designated the moon, she launched into blessings upon
the soft and fertile planet. At last he exclaimed:
"No! no! she draws all her fecundity from the other! Do you not see
her hovering about him like an amorous woman running after a man in a
field?" And he exalted the virtue of light unceasingly.
Far from depressing her mystic desires, he sought, on the contrary,
to excite them, and he even seemed to take joy in grieving her by the
revelation of a pitiless doctrine. In spite of the pains of her love
Salammbo threw herself upon it with transport.
But the more that Schahabarim felt himself in doubt about Tanith, the
more he wished to believe in her. At the bottom of his soul he was
arrested by remorse. He needed some proof, some manifestation from the
gods, and in the hope of obtaining it the priest devised an enterprise
which might save at once his country and his belief.
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