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Updated: June 17, 2025
It was the month of Schebaz and the depth of winter. The flowering pomegranates swelled against the azure of the sky, and the sea disappeared through the branches with an island in the distance half lost in the mist. Hamilcar stopped on perceiving Salammbo. She had come to him after the death of several male children.
Salammbo started, and bent her head. But Narr' Havas, pursuing the subject, compared his longings to flowers languishing for rain, or to lost travellers waiting for the day. He told her, further, that she was more beautiful than the moon, better than the wind of morning or than the face of a guest.
That is the reason why, if one seek for lessons in "naturalism" in Salammbô, he will find them, and will also find all the "romanticism" he seeks in the Education Sentimentale and in Madame Bovary.
"To claim it," said Schahabarim. "But if he refuses?" she rejoined. The priest scanned her fixedly with a smile such as she had never seen. "Yes, what is to be done?" repeated Salammbo. He rolled between his fingers the extremities of the bands which fell from his tiara upon his shoulders, standing motionless with eyes cast down.
He thought of all that had come to pass in his existence since the last time that he had passed that way! It was an infinite surprise, it stunned him. Then he was transported with joy at the thought of seeing Salammbo again. The reasons which he had for execrating her returned to his recollection, but he very quickly rejected them.
Salammbo crouched down upon the onyx step on the edge of the basin; she raised her ample sleeves, fastening them behind her shoulders, and began her ablutions in methodical fashion, according to the sacred rites.
Salammbo turned away from this unclean food, and fell asleep on the horses' caparisons which were spread in a corner of the hall. He awoke her before daylight. The dog was howling. The slave went up to it quietly, and struck off its head with a single blow of his dagger. Then he rubbed the horses' nostrils with blood to revive them. The old woman cast a malediction at him from behind.
Now that their anger was over they were seized with anxiety. Matho was suffering from vague melancholy. It seemed to him that Salammbo had indirectly been insulted. These rich men were a kind of appendage to her person. He sat down in the night on the edge of the pit, and recognised in their groanings something of the voice of which his heart was full.
He reached the foot of the Mappalian quarter and tried to climb up the face of the cliff. He covered his knees with blood, broke his nails, and then fell back into the waves and returned. His impotence exasperated him. He was jealous of this Carthage which contained Salammbo, as if of some one who had possessed her.
It is my great misfortune never to have heard one of Beck's works performed, but, judging from a fragment of a deliciously dreamy moonlight scene from his unfinished music drama, "Salammbô," which he kindly sent me, and from the enthusiasm of the severest critics, he must be granted a most unusual poetic gift, solidity and whimsicality, and a hardly excelled erudition.
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