and the grape-bunches of emerald, the rays from the precious stones
making a play of light through the painted columns upon the sleeping
faces.

Matho felt suffocated in the warm atmosphere pressed down upon him by
the cedar partitions. All these symbols of fecundation, these perfumes,
radiations, and breathings overwhelmed him. Through all the mystic
dazzling he kept thinking of Salammbo. She became confused with the
goddess herself, and his loved unfolded itself all the more, like the
great lotus-plants blooming upon the depths of the waters.

Spendius was calculating how much money he would have made in former
days by the sale of these women; and with a rapid glance he estimated
the weight of the golden necklaces as he passed by.

The temple was impenetrable on this side as on the other, and they
returned behind the first chamber. While Spendius was searching and
ferreting, Matho was prostrate before the door supplicating Tanith. He
besought her not to permit the sacrilege, and strove to soften her with
caressing words, such as are used to an angry person.

Spendius noticed a narrow aperture above the door.

"Rise!" he said to Matho, and he made him stand erect with his back
against the wall. Placing one foot in his hands, and then the other
upon his head, he reached up to the air-hole, made his way into it and
disappeared. Then Matho felt a knotted cord--that one which Spendius
had rolled around his body before entering the cisterns--fall upon his
shoulders, and bearing upon it with both hands he soon found himself by
the side of the other in a large hall filled with shadow.