His
bosom was panting, his teeth were chattering.
Taking her by the wrists he drew her gently to him, and then sat down
upon a cuirass beside the palm-tree bed which was covered with a lion's
skin. She was standing. He looked up at her, holding her thus between
his knees, and repeating:
"How beautiful you are! how beautiful you are!"
His eyes, which were continually fixed upon hers, pained her; and the
uncomfortableness, the repugnance increased in so acute a fashion that
Salammbo put a constraint upon herself not to cry out. The thought of
Schahabarim came back to her, and she resigned herself.
Matho still kept her little hands in his own; and from time to time,
in spite of the priest's command, she turned away her face and tried to
thrust him off by jerking her arms. He opened his nostrils the better
to breathe in the perfume which exhaled from her person. It was a fresh,
indefinable emanation, which nevertheless made him dizzy, like the smoke
from a perfuming-pan. She smelt of honey, pepper, incense, roses, with
another odour still.
But how was she thus with him in his tent, and at his disposal? Some one
no doubt had urged her. She had not come for the zaimph. His arms fell,
and he bent his head whelmed in sudden reverie.
To soften him Salammbo said to him in a plaintive voice:
"What have I done to you that you should desire my death?"
"Your death!"
She resumed:
"I saw you one evening by the light of my burning gardens amid fuming
cups and my slaughtered slaves, and your anger was so strong that you
bounded towards me and I was obliged to fly! Then terror entered into
Carthage.
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