"But Tanith is your enemy," retorted Spendius; "she is persecuting you
and you are dying through her wrath. You will be revenged upon her. She
will obey you, and you will become almost immortal and invincible."

Matho bent his head. Spendius continued:

"We should succumb; the army would be annihilated of itself. We have
neither flight, nor succour, nor pardon to hope for! What chastisement
from the gods can you be afraid of since you will have their power in
your own hands? Would you rather die on the evening of a defeat, in
misery beneath the shelter of a bush, or amid the outrages of the
populace and the flames of funeral piles? Master, one day you will enter
Carthage among the colleges of the pontiffs, who will kiss your sandals;
and if the veil of Tanith weighs upon you still, you will reinstate it
in its temple. Follow me! come and take it."

Matho was consumed by a terrible longing. He would have liked to possess
the veil while refraining from the sacrilege. He said to himself that
perhaps it would not be necessary to take it in order to monopolise its
virtue. He did not go to the bottom of his thought but stopped at the
boundary, where it terrified him.

"Come on!" he said; and they went off with rapid strides, side by side,
and without speaking.

The ground rose again, and the dwellings were near. They turned again
into the narrow streets amid the darkness. The strips of esparto-grass
with which the doors were closed, beat against the walls. Some camels
were ruminating in a square before heaps of cut grass. Then they passed
beneath a gallery covered with foliage. A pack of dogs were barking. But