Moreover, she would perhaps obtain the veil and not perish.
He stayed away for three days; on the evening of the fourth she sent for him.
The better to inflame her heart he reported to her all the invectives howled against Hamilcar in open council; he told her that she had erred, that she owed reparation for her crime, and that Rabbetna commanded the sacrifice.
A great uproar came frequently across the Mappalian district to Megara.
Schahabarim and Salammbo went out quickly, and gazed from the top of the galley staircase.
There were people in the square of Khamon shouting for arms.

The Ancients would not provide them, esteeming such an effort useless; others who had set out without a general had been massacred.

At last they were permitted to depart, and as a sort of homage to Moloch, or from a vague need of destruction, they tore up tall cypress trees in the woods of the temples, and having kindled them at the torches of the Kabiri, were carrying them through the streets singing.

These monstrous flames advanced swaying gently; they transmitted fires to the glass balls on the crests of the temples, to the ornaments of the colossuses and the beaks of the ships, passed beyond the terraces and formed suns as it were, which rolled through the town.

They descended the Acropolis.
The gate of Malqua opened.
"Are you ready ?" exclaimed Schahabarim, "or have you asked them to tell your father that you abandoned him ?" She hid her face in her veils, and the great lights retired, sinking gradually the while to the edge of the waves.
An indeterminate dread restrained her; she was afraid of Moloch and of Matho.