Around the circular flagstone on which its feet rested, the children, wrapped in black veils, formed a motionless circle; and its extravagantly long arms reached down their palms to them as though to seize the crown that they formed and carry it to the sky.
The rich, the Ancients, the women, the whole multitude, thronged behind the priests and on the terraces of the houses.

The large painted stars revolved no longer; the tabernacles were set upon the ground; and the fumes from the censers ascended perpendicularly, spreading their bluish branches through the azure like gigantic trees.
Many fainted; others became inert and petrified in their ecstasy.
Infinite anguish weighed upon the breasts of the beholders.

The last shouts died out one by one,--and the people of Carthage stood breathless, and absorbed in the longing of their terror.
At last the high priest of Moloch passed his left hand beneath the children's veils, plucked a lock of hair from their foreheads, and threw it upon the flames.

Then the men in the red cloaks chanted the sacred hymn: "Homage to thee, Sun! king of the two zones, self-generating Creator, Father and Mother, Father and Son, God and Goddess, Goddess and God!" And their voices were lost in the outburst of instruments sounding simultaneously to drown the cries of the victims.

The eight-stringed scheminiths, the kinnors which had ten strings, and the nebals which had twelve, grated, whistled, and thundered.