Salammbo, Jules Toulot






such thraldom by her charms that he did not notice the rising of the tide until it was too late, when the waters engulfed him and his temptress carried him away to her cavern deep under the waves.

The ancient Egyptians held their dead in the most devout reverence. Those even of the poorest were embalmed with many ceremoies, and in every wealthy house was a private temple in which the statues of the departed were worshipped. Elegiac music and songs were the accompaniment of these ceremonials. The picture by Miss Coomans represents some Egyptian princess who has lost one whom she has reverenced or loved, and to whom, as she sits in the throne chair of her house, her slaves sing the elegy to the dead. In 1862 the literary world of France was treated to a sensation. It consisted in a romance entitled "Salammbo," written by Gustave Flaubert, which in the most daring and realistic manner revived the life of ancient Carthage, at the period of the Punic War, and provided a model upon which numerous realistic novelists have built themselves up. "Salammbo" took its title from the heroine of the story, a weird creation who has furnished a type which many painters have essayed to realize. One of the most successful of these attempts is that of Jules Jean Baptiste Toulot, a pupil of Gerome and a painter of the figure of much power. He represents Flaubert's heroine as she is about to enter bath, receiving the caresses of her pet serpent. "At the Fountain," by Gaston C. Saintpierre, is a study of an Algerian girl, one of his souvenirs of African travel.

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