CHAPTER VII HAMILCAR BARCA
The Announcer of the Moons, who watched on the summit of the temple ofEschmoun every night in order to signal the disturbances of the planetwith his trumpet, one morning perceived towards the west something likea bird skimming the surface of the sea with its long wings.
It was a ship with three tiers of oars and with a horse carved on theprow. The sun was rising; the Announcer of the Moons put up his handbefore his eyes, and then grasping his clarion with outstretched armssounded a loud brazen cry over Carthage.
People came out of every house; they would not believe what was said;they disputed with one another; the mole was covered with people. Atlast they recognised Hamilcar’s trireme.
It advanced in fierce and haughty fashion, cleaving the foam around it,the lateen-yard quite square and the sail bulging down the whole lengthof the mast; its gigantic oars kept time as they beat the water;every now and then the extremity of the keel, which was shaped like aplough-share, would appear, and the ivory-headed horse, rearing bothits feet beneath the spur which terminated the prow, would seem to bespeeding over the plains of the sea.
As it rounded the promontory the wind ceased, the sail fell, and a manwas seen standing bareheaded beside the pilot. It was he, Hamilcar, theSuffet! About his sides he wore gleaming sheets of steel; a red cloak,fastened to his shoulders, left his arms visible; two pearls of greatlength hung from his ears, and his black, bushy beard rested on hisbreast.
The galley, however, tossing amid the rocks, was proceeding alongthe side of the mole, and the crowd followed it on the flag-stones,shouting:
“Greeting! blessing! Eye of Khamon! ah! deliver us! ’Tis the faultof the rich! they want to put you to death! Take care of yourself,Barca!”
He made no reply, as if the loud clamour of oceans and battles hadcompletely deafened him. But when he was below the staircase leadingdown from the Acropolis, Hamilcar raised his head, and looked withfolded arms upon the temple of Eschmoun. His gaze mounted higher still,to the great pure sky; he shouted an order in a harsh voice to hissailors; the trireme leaped forward; it grazed the idol set up at thecorner of the mole to stay the storms; and in the merchant harbour,which was full of filth, fragments of wood, and rinds of fruit, itpushed aside and crushed against the other ships moored to stakes andterminating in crocodiles’ jaws. The people hastened thither, and somethrew themselves into the water to swim to it. It was already at thevery end before the gate which bristled with nails. The gate rose, andthe trireme disappeared beneath the deep arch.
The Military Harbour was completely separated from the town; whenambassadors arrived, they had to proceed between two walls througha passage which had its outlet on the left in front of the temple ofKhamon. This great expanse of water was as round as a cup, and wasbordered with quays on which sheds were built for sheltering the ships.Before each of these rose two pillars bearing the horns of Ammon ontheir capitals and forming continuous porticoes all round the basin. Onan island in the centre stood a house for the marine Suffet.
The water was so limpid that the bottom was visible with its pavingof white pebbles. The noise of the streets did not reach so far, andHamilcar as he passed recognised the triremes which he had formerlycommanded.
Not more than twenty perhaps remained, under shelter on the land,leaning over on their sides or standing upright on their keels, withlofty poops and swelling prows, and covered with gildings and mysticsymbols. The chimaeras had lost their wings, the Patæc Gods their arms,the bulls their silver horns;—and half-painted, motionless, and rottenas they were, yet full of associations, and still emitting the scentof voyages, they all seemed to say to him, like mutilated soldiers onseeing their master again, “’Tis we! ’Tis we! and you too arevanquished!”
No one excepting the marine Suffet might enter the admiral’s house.So long as there was no proof of his death he was considered as still inexistence. In this way the Ancients avoided a master the more, and theyhad not failed to comply with the custom in respect to Hamilcar.
The Suffet proceeded into the deserted apartments. At every step herecognised armour and furniture—familiar objects which neverthelessastonished him, and in a perfuming-pan in the vestibule there evenremained the ashes of the perfumes that had been kindled at hisdeparture for the conjuration of Melkarth. It was not thus that he hadhoped to return. Everything that he had done, everything that he hadseen, unfolded itself in his memory: assaults, conflagrations, legions,tempests, Drepanum, Syracuse, Lilybæum, Mount Etna, the plateau ofEryx, five years of battles,—until the fatal day when arms had beenlaid down and Sicily had been lost. Then he once more saw the woods ofcitron-trees, and herdsmen with their goats on grey mountains; and hisheart leaped at the thought of the establishment of another Carthagedown yonder. His projects and his recollections buzzed through hishead, which was still dizzy from the pitching of the vessel; he wasoverwhelmed with anguish, and, becoming suddenly weak, he felt thenecessity of drawing near to the gods.
Then he went up to the highest story of his house, and taking anail-studded staple from a golden shell, which hung on his arm, heopened a small oval chamber.
It was softly lighted by means of delicate black discs let into thewall and as transparent as glass. Between the rows of these equal discs,holes, like those for the urns in columbaria, were hollowed out. Each ofthem contained a round dark stone, which appeared to be very heavy.Only people of superior understanding honoured these abaddirs, which hadfallen from the moon. By their fall they denoted the stars, the sky, andfire; by their colour dark night, and by their density the cohesion ofterrestrial things. A stifling atmosphere filled this mystic place. Theround stones lying in the niches were whitened somewhat with sea-sandwhich the wind had no doubt driven through the door. Hamilcar countedthem one after another with the tip of his finger; then he hid his facein a saffron-coloured veil, and, falling on his knees, stretched himselfon the ground with both arms extended.
The daylight outside was beginning to strike on the folding shuttersof black lattice-work. Arborescences, hillocks, eddies, and ill-definedanimals appeared in their diaphanous thickness; and the light cameterrifying and yet peaceful as it must be behind the sun in the dullspaces of future creations. He strove to banish from his thoughts allforms, and all symbols and appellations of the gods, that he might thebetter apprehend the immutable spirit which outward appearances tookaway. Something of the planetary vitalities penetrated him, and he feltwithal a wiser and more intimate scorn of death and of every accident.When he rose he was filled with serene fearlessness and was proofagainst pity or dread, and as his chest was choking he went to the topof the tower which overlooked Carthage.
The town sank downwards in a long hollow curve, with its cupolas, itstemples, its golden roofs, its houses, its clusters of palm trees hereand there, and its glass balls with streaming rays, while the rampartsformed, as it were, the gigantic border of this horn of plenty whichpoured itself out before him. Far below he could see the harbours, thesquares, the interiors of the courts, the plan of the streets, and thepeople, who seemed very small and but little above the level of thepavement. Ah! if Hanno had not arrived too late on the morning ofthe Ægatian islands! He fastened his eyes on the extreme horizon andstretched forth his quivering arms in the direction of Rome.
The steps of the Acropolis were occupied by the multitude. In the squareof Khamon the people were pressing forwards to see the Suffet comeout, and the terraces were gradually being loaded with people; a fewrecognised him, and he was saluted; but he retired in order the betterto excite the impatience of the people.
Hamilcar found the most important men of his party below in the hall:Istatten, Subeldia, Hictamon, Yeoubas and others. They related to himall that had taken place since the conclusion of the peace: the greedof the Ancients, the departure of the soldiers, their return, theirdemands, the capture of Gisco, the theft of the zaïmph, the relief andsubsequent abandonment of Utica; but no one ventured to tell him of theevents which concerned himself. At last they
separated, to meet againduring the night at the assembly of the Ancients in the temple ofMoloch.
They had just gone out when a tumult arose outside the door. Some onewas trying to enter in spite of the servants; and as the disturbance wasincreasing Hamilcar ordered the stranger to be shown in.
An old Negress made her appearance, broken, wrinkled, trembling,stupid-looking, wrapped to the heels in ample blue veils. She advancedface to face with the Suffet, and they looked at each other for sometime; suddenly Hamilcar started; at a wave of his hand the slaveswithdrew. Then, signing to her to walk with precaution, he drew her bythe arm into a remote apartment.
The Negress threw herself upon the floor to kiss his feet; he raised herbrutally.
“Where have you left him, Iddibal?”
“Down there, Master;” and extricating herself from her veils, sherubbed her face with her sleeve; the black colour, the senile trembling,the bent figure disappeared, and there remained a strong old man whoseskin seemed tanned by sand, wind, and sea. A tuft of white hair rose onhis skull like the crest of a bird; and he indicated his disguise, as itlay on the ground, with an ironic glance.
“You have done well, Iddibal! ’Tis well!” Then piercing him, as itwere, with his keen gaze: “No one yet suspects?”
The old man swore to him by the Kabiri that the mystery had been kept.They never left their cottage, which was three days’ journey fromHadrumetum, on a shore peopled with turtles, and with palms on the dune.“And in accordance with your command, O Master! I teach him to hurlthe javelin and to drive a team.”
“He is strong, is he not?”
“Yes, Master, and intrepid as well! He has no fear of serpents, orthunder, or phantoms. He runs bare-footed like a herdsman along thebrinks of precipices.”
“Speak! speak!”
“He invents snares for wild beasts. Would you believe it, that lastmoon he surprised an eagle; he dragged it away, and the bird’s bloodand the child’s were scattered in the air in large drops like drivenroses. The animal in its fury enwrapped him in the beating of itswings; he strained it against his breast, and as it died his laughterincreased, piercing and proud like the clashing of swords.”
Hamilcar bent his head, dazzled by such presages of greatness.
“But he has been for some time restless and disturbed. He gazes atthe sails passing far out at sea; he is melancholy, he rejects bread,he inquires about the gods, and he wishes to become acquainted withCarthage.”
“No, no! not yet!” exclaimed the Suffet.
The old slave seemed to understand the peril which alarmed Hamilcar, andhe resumed:
“How is he to be restrained? Already I am obliged to make himpromises, and I have come to Carthage only to buy him a dagger witha silver handle and pearls all around it.” Then he told how, havingperceived the Suffet on the terrace, he had passed himself off on thewarders of the harbour as one of Salammbô’s women, so as to make hisway in to him.
Hamilcar remained for a long time apparently lost in deliberation; atlast he said:
“To-morrow you will present yourself at sunset behind the purplefactories in Megara, and imitate a jackal’s cry three times. If you donot see me, you will return to Carthage on the first day of every moon.Forget nothing! Love him! You may speak to him now about Hamilcar.”
The slave resumed his costume, and they left the house and the harbourtogether.
Hamilcar went on his way alone on foot and without an escort, for themeetings of the Ancients were, under extraordinary circumstances, alwayssecret, and were resorted to mysteriously.
At first he went along the western front of the Acropolis, and thenpassed through the Green Market, the galleries of Kinisdo, and thePerfumers’ suburb. The scattered lights were being extinguished, thebroader streets grew still, then shadows glided through the darkness.They followed him, others appeared, and like him they all directed theircourse towards the Mappalian district.
The temple of Moloch was built at the foot of a steep defile in asinister spot. From below nothing could be seen but lofty walls risingindefinitely like those of a monstrous tomb. The night was gloomy, agreyish fog seemed to weigh upon the sea, which beat against the cliffwith a noise as of death-rattles and sobs; and the shadows graduallyvanished as if they had passed through the walls.
But as soon as the doorway was crossed one found oneself in a vastquadrangular court bordered by arcades. In the centre rose a mass ofarchitecture with eight equal faces. It was surmounted by cupolas whichthronged around a second story supporting a kind of rotunda, from whichsprang a cone with a re-entrant curve and terminating in a ball on thesummit.
Fires were burning in cylinders of filigree-work fitted upon poles,which men were carrying to and fro. These lights flickered in the gustsof wind and reddened the golden combs which fastened their plaitedhair on the nape of the neck. They ran about calling to one another toreceive the Ancients.
Here and there on the flag-stones huge lions were couched likesphinxes, living symbols of the devouring sun. They were slumbering withhalf-closed eyelids. But roused by the footsteps and voices they roseslowly, came towards the Ancients, whom they recognised by their dress,and rubbed themselves against their thighs, arching their backs withsonorous yawns; the vapour of their breath passed across the light ofthe torches. The stir increased, doors closed, all the priests fled,and the Ancients disappeared beneath the columns which formed a deepvestibule round the temple.
These columns were arranged in such a way that their circular ranks,which were contained one within another, showed the Saturnian periodwith its years, the years with their months, and the months with theirdays, and finally reached to the walls of the sanctuary.
Here it was that the Ancients laid aside their sticks ofnarwhal’s-horn,—for a law which was always observed inflicted thepunishment of death upon any one entering the meeting with any kindof weapon. Several wore a rent repaired with a strip of purple at thebottom of their garment, to show that they had not been economical intheir dress when mourning for their relatives, and this testimony totheir affliction prevented the slit from growing larger. Others hadtheir beards inclosed in little bags of violet skin, and fastened totheir ears by two cords. They all accosted one another by embracingbreast to breast. They surrounded Hamilcar with congratulations; theymight have been taken for brothers meeting their brother again.
These men were generally thick-set, with curved noses like those of theAssyrian colossi. In a few, however, the more prominent cheek-bone, thetaller figure, and the narrower foot, betrayed an African originand nomad ancestors. Those who lived continually shut up in theircounting-houses had pale faces; others showed in theirs the severityof the desert, and strange jewels sparkled on all the fingers oftheir hands, which were burnt by unknown suns. The navigators might bedistinguished by their rolling gait, while the men of agriculturesmelt of the wine-press, dried herbs, and the sweat of mules. Theseold pirates had lands under tillage, these money-grubbers would fitout ships, these proprietors of cultivated lands supported slaves whofollowed trades. All were skilled in religious discipline, expert instrategy, pitiless and rich. They looked wearied of prolonged cares.Their flaming eyes expressed distrust, and their habits of travellingand lying, trafficking and commanding, gave an appearance of cunningand violence, a sort of discreet and convulsive brutality to their wholedemeanour. Further, the influence of the god cast a gloom upon them.
They first passed through a vaulted hall which was shaped like an egg.Seven doors, corresponding to the seven planets, displayed seven squaresof different colours against the wall. After traversing a long room theyentered another similar hall.
A candelabrum completely covered with chiselled flowers was burning atthe far end, and each of its eight golden branches bore a wick of byssusin a diamond chalice. It was placed upon the last of the long stepsleading to a great altar, the corners of which terminated in horns ofbrass. Two lateral staircases led to its flattened summit; the stonesof it could not be seen; it was like a mountain of heaped cin
ders, andsomething indistinct was slowly smoking at the top of it. Then furtherback, higher than the candelabrum, and much higher than the altar, rosethe Moloch, all of iron, and with gaping apertures in his human breast.His outspread wings were stretched upon the wall, his tapering handsreached down to the ground; three black stones bordered by yellowcircles represented three eyeballs on his brow, and his bull’s headwas raised with a terrible effort as if in order to bellow.
Ebony stools were ranged round the apartment. Behind each of them wasa bronze shaft resting on three claws and supporting a torch. All theselights were reflected in the mother-of-pearl lozenges which formed thepavement of the hall. So lofty was the latter that the red colour of thewalls grew black as it rose towards the vaulted roof, and the three eyesof the idol appeared far above like stars half lost in the night.
The Ancients sat down on the ebony stools after putting the trains oftheir robes over their heads. They remained motionless with their handscrossed inside their broad sleeves, and the mother-of-pearl pavementseemed like a luminous river streaming from the altar to the door andflowing beneath their naked feet.
The four pontiffs had their places in the centre, sitting back to backon four ivory seats which formed a cross, the high-priest of Eschmounin a hyacinth robe, the high-priest of Tanith in a white linen robe, thehigh-priest of Khamon in a tawny woollen robe, and the high-priest ofMoloch in a purple robe.
Hamilcar advanced towards the candelabrum. He walked all round it,looking at the burning wicks; then he threw a scented powder upon them,and violet flames appeared at the extremities of the branches.
Then a shrill voice rose; another replied to it, and the hundredAncients, the four pontiffs, and Hamilcar, who remained standing,simultaneously intoned a hymn, and their voices—ever repeating thesame syllables and strengthening the sounds—rose, grew loud, becameterrible, and then suddenly were still.
There was a pause for some time. At last Hamilcar drew from his breast alittle three-headed statuette, as blue as sapphire, and placed it beforehim. It was the image of Truth, the very genius of his speech. Then hereplaced it in his bosom, and all, as if seized with sudden wrath, criedout:
“They are good friends of yours, are the Barbarians! Infamous traitor!You come back to see us perish, do you not? Let him speak!—No! no!”
They were taking their revenge for the constraint to which politicalceremonial had just obliged them; and even though they had wished forHamilcar’s return, they were now indignant that he had not anticipatedtheir disasters, or rather that he had not endured them as well as they.
When the tumult had subsided, the pontiff of Moloch rose:
“We ask you why you did not return to Carthage?”
“What is that to you?” replied the Suffet disdainfully.
Their shouts were redoubled.
“Of what do you accuse me? I managed the war badly, perhaps! You haveseen how I order my battles, you who conveniently allow Barbarians—”
“Enough! enough!”
He went on in a low voice so as to make himself the better listened to:
“Oh! that is true! I am wrong, lights of the Baals; there are intrepidmen among you! Gisco, rise!” And surveying the step of the altar withhalf-closed eyelids, as if he sought for some one, he repeated:
“Rise, Gisco! You can accuse me; they will protect you! But where ishe?” Then, as if he remembered himself: “Ah! in his house, no doubt!surrounded by his sons, commanding his slaves, happy, and counting onthe wall the necklaces of honour which his country has given to him!”
They moved about raising their shoulders as if they were being scourgedwith thongs. “You do not even know whether he is living or dead!”And without giving any heed to their clamours he said that in desertingthe Suffet they had deserted the Republic. So, too, the peace with Rome,however advantageous it might appear to them, was more fatal than twentybattles. A few—those who were the least rich of the Council andwere suspected of perpetual leanings towards the people or towardstyranny—applauded. Their opponents, chiefs of the Syssitia andadministrators, triumphed over them in point of numbers; and the moreeminent of them had ranged themselves close to Hanno, who was sitting atthe other end of the hall before the lofty door, which was closed by ahanging of hyacinth colour.
He had covered the ulcers on his face with paint. But the gold dust inhis hair had fallen upon his shoulders, where it formed two brilliantsheets, so that his hair appeared whitish, fine, and frizzled like wool.His hands were enveloped in linen soaked in a greasy perfume, whichdripped upon the pavement, and his disease had no doubt considerablyincreased, for his eyes were hidden beneath the folds of his eyelids.He had thrown back his head in order to see. His partisans urged him tospeak. At last in a hoarse and hideous voice he said:
“Less arrogance, Barca! We have all been vanquished! Each one supportshis own misfortune! Be resigned!”
“Tell us rather,” said Hamilcar, smiling, “how it was that yousteered your galleys into the Roman fleet?”
“I was driven by the wind,” replied Hanno.
“You are like a rhinoceros trampling on his dung: you aredisplaying your own folly! be silent!” And they began to indulge inrecriminations respecting the battle of the Ægatian islands.
Hanno accused him of not having come to meet him.
“But that would have left Eryx undefended. You ought to have stoodout from the coast; what prevented you? Ah! I forgot! all elephants areafraid of the sea!”
Hamilcar’s followers thought this jest so good that they burstout into loud laughter. The vault rang with it like the beating oftympanums.
Hanno denounced the unworthiness of such an insult; the disease hadcome upon him from a cold taken at the siege of Hecatompylos, and tearsflowed down his face like winter rain on a ruined wall.
Hamilcar resumed:
“If you had loved me as much as him there would be great joy inCarthage now! How many times did I not call upon you! and you alwaysrefused me money!”
“We had need of it,” said the chiefs of the Syssitia.
“And when things were desperate with me—we drank mules’ urine andate the straps of our sandals; when I would fain have had the blades ofgrass soldiers and made battalions with the rottenness of our dead, yourecalled the vessels that I had left!”
“We could not risk everything,” replied Baat-Baal, who possessedgold mines in Darytian Gætulia.
“But what did you do here, at Carthage, in your houses, behind yourwalls? There are Gauls on the Eridanus, who ought to have been roused,Chanaanites at Cyrene who would have come, and while the Romans sendambassadors to Ptolemæus—”
“Now he is extolling the Romans to us!” Some one shouted out to him:“How much have they paid you to defend them?”
“Ask that of the plains of Brutium, of the ruins of Locri, ofMetapontum, and of Heraclea! I have burnt all their trees, Ihave pillaged all their temples, and even to the death of theirgrandchildren’s grandchildren—”
“Why, you disclaim like a rhetor!” said Kapouras, a very illustriousmerchant. “What is it that you want?”
“I say that we must be more ingenious or more terrible! If the wholeof Africa rejects your yoke the reason is, my feeble masters, that youdo not know how to fasten it to her shoulders! Agathocles, Regulus,Copio, any bold man has only to land and capture her; and when theLibyans in the east concert with the Numidians in the west, and theNomads come from the south, and the Romans from the north”—a cry ofhorror rose—“Oh! you will beat your breasts, and roll in the dust,and tear your cloaks! No matter! you will have to go and turn themill-stone in the Suburra, and gather grapes on the hills of Latium.”
They smote their right thighs to mark their sense of the scandal, andthe sleeves of their robes rose like large wings of startled birds.Hamilcar, carried away by a spirit, continued his speech, standing onthe highest step of the altar, quivering and terrible; he raised hisarms, and the rays from the candelabrum which burned behind him passedbetween his fingers like jave
lins of gold.
“You will lose your ships, your country seats, your chariots, yourhanging beds, and the slaves who rub your feet! The jackal will crouchin your palaces, and the ploughshare will upturn your tombs. Nothingwill be left but the eagles’ scream and a heap of ruins. Carthage,thou wilt fall!”
The four pontiffs spread out their hands to avert the anathema. All hadrisen. But the marine Suffet, being a sacerdotal magistrate under theprotection of the Sun, was inviolate so long as the assembly of therich had not judged him. Terror was associated with the altar. They drewback.
Hamilcar had ceased speaking, and was panting with eye fixed, his faceas pale as the pearls of his tiara, almost frightened at himself, andhis spirit lost in funereal visions. From the height on which he stood,all the torches on the bronze shafts seemed to him like a vast crown offire laid level with the pavement; black smoke issuing from them mountedup into the darkness of the vault; and for some minutes the silence wasso profound that they could hear in the distance the sound of the sea.
Then the Ancients began to question one another. Their interests, theirexistence, were attacked by the Barbarians. But it was impossible toconquer them without the assistance of the Suffet, and in spite of theirpride this consideration made them forget every other. His friends weretaken aside. There were interested reconciliations, understandings, andpromises. Hamilcar would not take any further part in any government.All conjured him. They besought him; and as the word treason occurredin their speech, he fell into a passion. The sole traitor was the GreatCouncil, for as the enlistment of the soldiers expired with the war,they became free as soon as the war was finished; he even exalted theirbravery and all the advantages which might be derived from interestingthem in the Republic by donations and privileges.
Then Magdassin, a former provincial governor, said, as he rolled hisyellow eyes:
“Truly Barca, with your travelling you have become a Greek, or aLatin, or something! Why speak you of rewards for these men? Rather letten thousand Barbarians perish than a single one of us!”
The Ancients nodded approval, murmuring:—“Yes, is there need for somuch trouble? They can always be had?”
“And they can be got rid of conveniently, can they not? They aredeserted as they were by you in Sardinia. The enemy is apprised of theroad which they are to take, as in the case of those Gauls in Sicily,or perhaps they are disembarked in the middle of the sea. As I wasreturning I saw the rock quite white with their bones!”
“What a misfortune!” said Kapouras impudently.
“Have they not gone over to the enemy a hundred times?” cried theothers.
“Why, then,” exclaimed Hamilcar, “did you recall them to Carthage,notwithstanding your laws? And when they are in your town, poor andnumerous amid all your riches, it does not occur to you to weaken themby the slightest division! Afterwards you dismiss the whole of themwith their women and children, without keeping a single hostage! Didyou expect that they would murder themselves to spare you the pain ofkeeping your oaths? You hate them because they are strong! You hate mestill more, who am their master! Oh! I felt it just now when you werekissing my hands and were all putting a constraint upon yourselves notto bite them!”
If the lions that were sleeping in the court had come howling in, theuproar could not have been more frightful. But the pontiff of Eschmounrose, and, standing perfectly upright, with his knees close together,his elbows pressed to his body, and his hands half open, he said:
“Barca, Carthage has need that you should take the general command ofthe Punic forces against the Mercenaries!”
“I refuse,” replied Hamilcar.
“We will give you full authority,” cried the chiefs of the Syssitia.
“No!”
“With no control, no partition, all the money that you want, allthe captives, all the booty, fifty zereths of land for every enemy’scorpse.”
“No! no! because it is impossible to conquer with you!”
“He is afraid!”
“Because you are cowardly, greedy, ungrateful, pusillanimous andmad!”
“He is careful of them!”
“In order to put himself at their head,” said some one.
“And return against us,” said another; and from the bottom of thehall Hanno howled:
“He wants to make himself king!”
Then they bounded up, overturning the seats and the torches: the crowdof them rushed towards the altar; they brandished daggers. But Hamilcardived into his sleeves and drew from them two broad cutlasses; andhalf stooping, his left foot advanced, his eyes flaming and histeeth clenched, he defied them as he stood there beneath the goldencandelabrum.
Thus they had brought weapons with them as a precaution; it was a crime;they looked with terror at one another. As all were guilty, every onebecame quickly reassured; and by degrees they turned their backs on theSuffet and came down again maddened with humiliation. For the secondtime they recoiled before him. They remained standing for some time.Several who had wounded their fingers put them to their mouths or rolledthem gently in the hem of their mantles, and they were about to departwhen Hamilcar heard these words:
“Why! it is a piece of delicacy to avoid distressing his daughter!”
A louder voice was raised:
“No doubt, since she takes her lovers from among the Mercenaries!”
At first he tottered, then his eye rapidly sought for Schahabarim. Butthe priest of Tanith had alone remained in his place; and Hamilcar couldsee only his lofty cap in the distance. All were sneering in his face.In proportion as his anguish increased their joy redoubled, and thosewho were behind shouted amid the hootings:
“He was seen coming out of her room!”
“One morning in the month of Tammouz!”
“It was the thief who stole the zaïmph!”
“A very handsome man!”
“Taller than you!”
He snatched off the tiara, the ensign of his rank—his tiara with itseight mystic rows, and with an emerald shell in the centre—and withboth hands and with all his strength dashed it to the ground; the goldencircles rebounded as they broke, and the pearls rang upon the pavement.Then they saw a long scar upon the whiteness of his brow; it moved likea serpent between his eyebrows; all his limbs trembled. He ascended oneof the lateral staircases which led on to the altar, and walked uponthe latter! This was to devote himself to the god, to offer himself asa holocaust. The motion of his mantle agitated the lights of thecandelabrum, which was lower than his sandals, and the fine dust raisedby his footsteps surrounded him like a cloud as high as the waist. Hestopped between the legs of the brass colossus. He took up two handfulsof the dust, the mere sight of which made every Carthaginian shudderwith horror, and said:
“By the hundred torches of your Intelligences! by the eight fires ofthe Kabiri! by the stars, the meteors, and the volcanoes! by everythingthat burns! by the thirst of the desert and the saltness of the ocean!by the cave of Hadrumetum and the empire of Souls! by extermination! bythe ashes of your sons and the ashes of the brothers of your ancestorswith which I now mingle my own!—you, the Hundred of the Council ofCarthage, have lied in your accusation of my daughter! And I, HamilcarBarca, marine Suffet, chief of the rich and ruler of the people, in thepresence of bull-headed Moloch, I swear”—they expected somethingfrightful, but he resumed in a loftier and calmer tone—“that I willnot even speak to her about it!”
The sacred servants entered wearing their golden combs, some with purplesponges and others with branches of palm. They raised the hyacinthcurtain which was stretched before the door; and through the opening ofthis angle there was visible behind the other halls the great pinksky which seemed to be a continuation of the vault and to rest atthe horizon upon the blue sea. The sun was issuing from the waves andmounting upwards. It suddenly struck upon the breast of the brazencolossus, which was divided into seven compartments closed by gratings.His red-toothed jaws opened in a horrible yawn; his enormous nostrilswere dilated, the broad daylight anim
ated him, and gave him a terribleand impatient aspect, as if he would fain have leaped without to minglewith the star, the god, and together traverse the immensities.
The torches, however, which were scattered on the ground, were stillburning, while here and there on the mother-of-pearl pavement wasstretched from them what looked like spots of blood. The Ancients werereeling from exhaustion; they filled their lungs inhaling the freshnessof the air; the sweat flowed down their livid faces; they had shoutedso much that they could now scarcely make their voices heard. But theirwrath against the Suffet was not at all abated; they hurled menaces athim by way of farewells, and Hamilcar answered them again.
“Until the next night, Barca, in the temple of Eschmoun!”
“I shall be there!”
“We will have you condemned by the rich!”
“And I you by the people!”
“Take care that you do not end on the cross!”
“And you that you are not torn to pieces in the streets!”
As soon as they were on the threshold of the court they again assumed acalm demeanour.
Their runners and coachmen were waiting for them at the door. Most ofthem departed on white mules. The Suffet leaped into his chariot andtook the reins; the two animals, curving their necks, and rhythmicallybeating the resounding pebbles, went up the whole of the Mappalian Wayat full gallop, and the silver vulture at the extremity of the poleseemed to fly, so quickly did the chariot pass along.
The road crossed a field planted with slabs of stone, which were paintedon the top like pyramids, and had open hands carved out in the centre asif all the dead men lying beneath had stretched them out towards heavento demand something. Next there came scattered cabins built of earth,branches, and bulrush-hurdles, and all of a conical shape. Thesedwellings, which became constantly denser as the road ascended towardsthe Suffet’s gardens, were irregularly separated from one another bylittle pebble walls, trenches of spring water, ropes of esparto-grass,and nopal hedges. But Hamilcar’s eyes were fastened on a great tower,the three storys of which formed three monster cylinders—the firstbeing built of stone, the second of brick, and the third all ofcedar—supporting a copper cupola upon twenty-four pillars of juniper,from which slender interlacing chains of brass hung down after themanner of garlands. This lofty edifice overlooked the buildings—theemporiums and mercantile houses—which stretched to the right, whilethe women’s palace rose at the end of the cypress trees, which wereranged in line like two walls of bronze.
When the echoing chariot had entered through the narrow gateway itstopped beneath a broad shed in which there were shackled horses eatingfrom heaps of chopped grass.
All the servants hastened up. They formed quite a multitude, those whoworked on the country estates having been brought to Carthage throughfear of the soldiers. The labourers, who were clad in animals’ skins,had chains riveted to their ankles and trailing after them; the workersin the purple factories had arms as red as those of executioners; thesailors wore green caps; the fishermen coral necklaces; the huntsmencarried nets on their shoulders; and the people belonging to Megarawore black or white tunics, leathern drawers, and caps of straw, felt orlinen, according to their service or their different occupations.
Behind pressed a tattered populace. They lived without employment remotefrom the apartments, slept at night in the gardens, ate the refusefrom the kitchens,—a human mouldiness vegetating in the shadow ofthe palace. Hamilcar tolerated them from foresight even more than fromscorn. They had all put a flower in the ear in token of their joy, andmany of them had never seen him.
But men with head-dresses like the Sphinx’s, and furnished with greatsticks, dashed into the crowd, striking right and left. This was todrive back the slaves, who were curious to see their master, so that hemight not be assailed by their numbers or inconvenienced by their smell.
Then they all threw themselves flat on the ground, crying:
“Eye of Baal, may your house flourish!” And through these people asthey lay thus on the ground in the avenue of cypress trees, Abdalonim,the Steward of the stewards, waving a white miter, advanced towardsHamilcar with a censer in his hand.
Salammbô was then coming down the galley staircases. All her slavewomen followed her; and, at each of her steps, they also descended. Theheads of the Negresses formed big black spots on the line of the bandsof the golden plates clasping the foreheads of the Roman women. Othershad silver arrows, emerald butterflies, or long bodkins set like suns intheir hair. Rings, clasps, necklaces, fringes, and bracelets shone amidthe confusion of white, yellow, and blue garments; a rustling oflight material became audible; the pattering of sandals might be heardtogether with the dull sound of naked feet as they were set down on thewood;—and here and there a tall eunuch, head and shoulders above them,smiled with his face in air. When the shouting of the men had subsidedthey hid their faces in their sleeves, and together uttered a strangecry like the howling of a she-wolf, and so frenzied and strident wasit that it seemed to make the great ebony staircase, with its throngingwomen, vibrate from top to bottom like a lyre.
The wind lifted their veils, and the slender stems of the papyrus plantrocked gently. It was the month of Schebaz and the depth of winter. Theflowering pomegranates swelled against the azure of the sky, and thesea disappeared through the branches with an island in the distance halflost in the mist.
Hamilcar stopped on perceiving Salammbô. She had come to him after thedeath of several male children. Moreover, the birth of daughterswas considered a calamity in the religions of the Sun. The gods hadafterwards sent him a son; but he still felt something of the betrayalof his hope, and the shock, as it were, of the curse which he haduttered against her. Salammbô, however, continued to advance.
Long bunches of various-coloured pearls fell from her ears to hershoulders, and as far as her elbows. Her hair was crisped so as tosimulate a cloud. Round her neck she wore little quadrangular plates ofgold, representing a woman between two rampant lions; and her costumewas a complete reproduction of the equipment of the goddess. Herbroad-sleeved hyacinth robe fitted close to her figure, widening outbelow. The vermilion on her lips gave additional whiteness to her teeth,and the antimony on her eyelids greater length to her eyes. Her sandals,which were cut out in bird’s plumage, had very high heels, and she wasextraordinarily pale, doubtless on account of the cold.
At last she came close to Hamilcar, and without looking at him, withoutraising her head to him:
“Greeting, eye of Baalim, eternal glory! triumph! leisure!satisfaction! riches! Long has my heart been sad and the house drooping.But the returning master is like reviving Tammouz; and beneathyour gaze, O father, joyfulness and a new existence will everywhereprevail!”
And taking from Taanach’s hands a little oblong vase wherein smokeda mixture of meal, butter, cardamom, and wine: “Drink freely,” saidshe, “of the returning cup, which your servant has prepared!”
He replied: “A blessing upon you!” and he mechanically grasped thegolden vase which she held out to him.
He scanned her, however, with such harsh attention, that Salammbô wastroubled and stammered out:
“They have told you, O Master!”
“Yes! I know!” said Hamilcar in a low voice.
Was this a confession, or was she speaking of the Barbarians? And headded a few vague words upon the public embarrassments which he hoped byhis sole efforts to clear away.
“O father!” exclaimed Salammbô, “you will not obliterate what isirreparable!”
Then he drew back and Salammbô was astonished at his amazement; forshe was not thinking of Carthage but of the sacrilege in which she foundherself implicated. This man, who made legions tremble and whom shehardly knew, terrified her like a god; he had guessed, he knew all,something awful was about to happen. “Pardon!” she cried.
Hamilcar slowly bowed his head.
Although she wished to accuse herself she dared not open her lips; andyet she felt stifled with the need of complaining and being com
forted.Hamilcar was struggling against a longing to break his oath. He kept itout of pride or from the dread of putting an end to his uncertainty; andhe looked into her face with all his might so as to lay hold on what shekept concealed at the bottom of her heart.
By degrees the panting Salammbô, crushed by such heavy looks, let herhead sink below her shoulders. He was now sure that she had erred inthe embrace of a Barbarian; he shuddered and raised both his fists. Sheuttered a shriek and fell down among her women, who crowded around her.
Hamilcar turned on his heel. All the stewards followed him.
The door of the emporiums was opened, and he entered a vast round hallform which long passages leading to other halls branched off like thespokes from the nave of a wheel. A stone disc stood in the centre withbalustrades to support the cushions that were heaped up upon carpets.
The Suffet walked at first with rapid strides; he breathed noisily, hestruck the ground with his heel, and drew his hand across his foreheadlike a man annoyed by flies. But he shook his head, and as he perceivedthe accumulation of his riches he became calm; his thoughts, which wereattracted by the vistas in the passages, wandered to the other hallsthat were full of still rarer treasures. Bronze plates, silver ingots,and iron bars alternated with pigs of tin brought from the Cassiteridesover the Dark Sea; gums from the country of the Blacks were running overtheir bags of palm bark; and gold dust heaped up in leathern bottles wasinsensibly creeping out through the worn-out seams. Delicate filamentsdrawn from marine plants hung amid flax from Egypt, Greece, Taprobaneand Judæa; mandrepores bristled like large bushes at the foot of thewalls; and an indefinable odour—the exhalation from perfumes, leather,spices, and ostrich feathers, the latter tied in great bunches at thevery top of the vault—floated through the air. An arch was formedabove the door before each passage with elephants’ teeth placedupright and meeting together at the points.
At last he ascended the stone disc. All the stewards stood with armsfolded and heads bent while Abdalonim reared his pointed mitre with ahaughty air.
Hamilcar questioned the Chief of the Ships. He was an old pilot witheyelids chafed by the wind, and white locks fell to his hips as ifdashing foam of the tempests had remained on his beard.
He replied that he had sent a fleet by Gades and Thymiamata to try toreach Eziongaber by doubling the Southern Horn and the promontory ofAromata.
Others had advanced continuously towards the west for four moons withoutmeeting with any shore; but the ships prows became entangled inweeds, the horizon echoed continually with the noise of cataracts,blood-coloured mists darkened the sun, a perfume-laden breeze lulled thecrews to sleep; and their memories were so disturbed that they were nowunable to tell anything. However, expeditions had ascended the rivers ofthe Scythians, had made their way into Colchis, and into the countriesof the Jugrians and of the Estians, had carried off fifteen hundredmaidens in the Archipelago, and sunk all the strange vessels sailingbeyond Cape Oestrymon, so that the secret of the routes should notbe known. King Ptolemæus was detaining the incense from Schesbar;Syracuse, Elathia, Corsica, and the islands had furnished nothing, andthe old pilot lowered his voice to announce that a trireme was taken atRusicada by the Numidians,—“for they are with them, Master.”
Hamilcar knit his brows; then he signed to the Chief of the Journeys tospeak. This functionary was enveloped in a brown, ungirdled robe, andhad his head covered with a long scarf of white stuff which passed alongthe edge of his lips and fell upon his shoulder behind.
The caravans had set out regularly at the winter equinox. But of fifteenhundred men directing their course towards the extreme boundaries ofEthiopia with excellent camels, new leathern bottles, and supplies ofpainted cloth, but one had reappeared at Carthage—the rest having diedof fatigue or become mad through the terror of the desert;—and he saidthat far beyond the Black Harousch, after passing the Atarantes and thecountry of the great apes, he had seen immense kingdoms, wherein thepettiest utensils were all of gold, a river of the colour of milk andas broad as the sea, forests of blue trees, hills of aromatics, monsterswith human faces vegetating on the rocks with eyeballs which expandedlike flowers to look at you; and then crystal mountains supporting thesun behind lakes all covered with dragons. Others had returned fromIndia with peacocks, pepper, and new textures. As to those who go by wayof the Syrtes and the temple of Ammon to purchase chalcedony, they hadno doubt perished in the sands. The caravans from Gætulia and Phazzanahad furnished their usual supplies; but he, the Chief of the Journeys,did not venture to fit one out just now.
Hamilcar understood; the Mercenaries were in occupation of the country.He leaned upon his other elbow with a hollow groan; and the Chief ofFarms was so afraid to speak that he trembled horribly in spite ofhis thick shoulders and his big red eyeballs. His face, which was assnub-nosed as a mastiff’s, was surmounted by a net woven of threadsof bark. He wore a waist-belt of hairy leopard’s skin, wherein gleamedtwo formidable cutlasses.
As soon as Hamilcar turned away he began to cry aloud and invoke all theBaals. It was not his fault! he could not help it! He had watched thetemperature, the soil, the stars, had planted at the winter solstice andpruned at the waning of the moon, had inspected the slaves and had beencareful of their clothes.
But Hamilcar grew angry at this loquacity. He clacked his tongue, andthe man with the cutlasses went on in rapid tones:
“Ah, Master! they have pillaged everything! sacked everything!destroyed everything! Three thousand trees have been cut down atMaschala, and at Ubada the granaries have been looted and the cisternsfilled up! At Tedes they have carried off fifteen hundred gomors ofmeal; at Marrazana they have killed the shepherds, eaten the flocks,burnt your house—your beautiful house with its cedar beams, whichyou used to visit in the summer! The slaves at Tuburbo who were reapingbarley fled to the mountains; and the asses, the mules both great andsmall, the oxen from Taormina, and the antelopes,—not a single oneleft! all carried away! It is a curse! I shall not survive it!” Hewent on again in tears: “Ah! if you knew how full the cellarswere, and how the ploughshares shone! Ah! the fine rams! ah! the finebulls!—”
Hamilcar’s wrath was choking him. It burst forth:
“Be silent! Am I a pauper then? No lies! speak the truth! I wishto know all that I have lost to the last shekel, to the last cab!Abdalonim, bring me the accounts of the ships, of the caravans, of thefarms, of the house! And if your consciences are not clear, woe be onyour heads! Go out!”
All the stewards went out walking backwards, with their fists touchingthe ground.
Abdalonim went up to a set of pigeon-holes in the wall, and from themidst of them took out knotted cords, strips of linen or papyrus, andsheeps’ shoulder-blades inscribed with delicate writing. He laid themat Hamilcar’s feet, placed in his hands a wooden frame furnished onthe inside with three threads on which balls of gold, silver, and hornwere strung, and began:
“One hundred and ninety-two houses in the Mappalian district let tothe New Carthaginians at the rate of one bekah a moon.”
“No! it is too much! be lenient towards the poor people! and you willtry to learn whether they are attached to the Republic, and writedown the names of those who appear to you to be the most daring! Whatnext?”
Abdalonim hesitated in surprise at such generosity.
Hamilcar snatched the strips of linen from his hands.
“What is this? three palaces around Khamon at twelve kesitahs a month!Make it twenty! I do not want to be eaten up by the rich.”
The Steward of the stewards, after a long salutation, resumed:
“Lent to Tigillas until the end of the season two kikars at three percent., maritime interest; to Bar-Malkarth fifteen hundred shekels on thesecurity of thirty slaves. But twelve have died in the salt-marshes.”
“That is because they were not hardy,” said the Suffet, laughing.“No matter! if he is in want of money, satisfy him! We should alwayslend, and at different rates of interest, according to the wealth of theindividual.”
> Then the servant hastened to read all that had been brought in by theiron-mines of Annaba, the coral fisheries, the purple factories, thefarming of the tax on the resident Greeks, the export of silver toArabia, where it had ten times the value of gold, and the captures ofvessels, deduction of a tenth being made for the temple of the goddess.“Each time I declared a quarter less, Master!” Hamilcar wasreckoning with the balls; they rang beneath his fingers.
“Enough! What have you paid?”
“To Stratonicles of Corinth, and to three Alexandrian merchants, onthese letters here (they have been realised), ten thousand Atheniandrachmas, and twelve Syrian talents of gold. The food for the crews,amounting to twenty minæ a month for each trireme—”
“I know! How many lost?”
“Here is the account on these sheets of lead,” said the Steward.“As to the ships chartered in common, it has often been necessaryto throw the cargo into the seas, and so the unequal losses have beendivided among the partners. For the ropes which were borrowed from thearsenals, and which it was impossible to restore, the Syssitia exactedeight hundred kesitahs before the expedition to Utica.”
“They again!” said Hamilcar, hanging his head; and he remained for atime as if quite crushed by the weight of all the hatreds that he couldfeel upon him. “But I do not see the Megara expenses?”
Abdalonim, turning pale, went to another set of pigeon-holes, andtook from them some planchettes of sycamore wood strung in packets onleathern strings.
Hamilcar, curious about these domestic details, listened to him andgrew calm with the monotony of the tones in which the figures wereenumerated. Abdalonim became slower. Suddenly he let the wooden sheetsfall to the ground and threw himself flat on his face with his armsstretched out in the position of a condemned criminal. Hamilcar pickedup the tablets without any emotion; and his lips parted and his eyesgrew larger when he perceived an exorbitant consumption of meat, fish,birds, wines, and aromatics, with broken vases, dead slaves, and spoiledcarpets set down as the expense of a single day.
Abdalonim, still prostrate, told him of the feast of the Barbarians.He had not been able to avoid the command of the Ancients. Moreover,Salammbô desired money to be lavished for the better reception of thesoldiers.
At his daughter’s name Hamilcar leaped to his feet. Then withcompressed lips he crouched down upon the cushions, tearing the fringeswith his nails, and panting with staring eyes.
“Rise!” said he; and he descended.
Abdalonim followed him; his knees trembled. But seizing an iron bar hebegan like one distraught to loosen the paving stones. A wooden discsprang up and soon there appeared throughout the length of the passageseveral of the large covers employed for stopping up the trenches inwhich grain was kept.
“You see, Eye of Baal,” said the servant, trembling, “they havenot taken everything yet! and these are each fifty cubits deep andfilled up to the brim! During your voyage I had them dug out in thearsenals, in the gardens, everywhere! your house is full of corn as yourheart is full of wisdom.”
A smile passed over Hamilcar’s face. “It is well, Abdalonim!”Then bending over to his ear: “You will have it brought from Etruria,Brutium, whence you will, and no matter at what price! Heap it and keepit! I alone must possess all the corn in Carthage.”
Then when they were alone at the extremity of the passage, Abdalonim,with one of the keys hanging at his girdle, opened a large quadrangularchamber divided in the centre by pillars of cedar. Gold, silver, andbrass coins were arranged on tables or packed into niches, and roseas high as the joists of the roof along the four walls. In the cornersthere were huge baskets of hippopotamus skin supporting whole rows ofsmaller bags; there were hillocks formed of heaps of bullion on thepavement; and here and there a pile that was too high had given way andlooked like a ruined column. The large Carthaginian pieces, representingTanith with a horse beneath a palm-tree, mingled with those from thecolonies, which were marked with a bull, star, globe, or crescent. Thenthere might be seen pieces of all values, dimensions, and ages arrayedin unequal amounts—from the ancient coins of Assyria, slender as thenail, to the ancient ones of Latium, thicker than the hand, with thebuttons of Egina, the tablets of Bactriana, and the short bars ofLacedæmon; many were covered with rust, or had grown greasy, or, havingbeen taken in nets or from among the ruins of captured cities, weregreen with the water or blackened by fire. The Suffet had speedilycalculated whether the sums present corresponded with the gains andlosses which had just been read to him; and he was going away when heperceived three brass jars completely empty. Abdalonim turned away hishead to mark his horror, and Hamilcar, resigning himself to it, saidnothing.
They crossed other passages and other halls, and at last reached a doorwhere, to ensure its better protection and in accordance with a Romancustom lately introduced into Carthage, a man was fastened by the waistto a long chain let into the wall. His beard and nails had grown to animmoderate length, and he swayed himself from right to left with thatcontinual oscillation which is characteristic of captive animals. Assoon as he recognised Hamilcar he darted towards him, crying:
“Pardon, Eye of Baal! pity! kill me! For ten years I have not seen thesun! In your father’s name, pardon!”
Hamilcar, without answering him, clapped his hands and three menappeared; and all four simultaneously stiffening their arms, drew backfrom its rings the enormous bar which closed the door. Hamilcar took atorch and disappeared into the darkness.
This was believed to be the family burying-place; but nothing would havebeen found in it except a broad well. It was dug out merely to bafflerobbers, and it concealed nothing. Hamilcar passed along beside it; thenstooping down he made a very heavy millstone turn upon its rollers, andthrough this aperture entered an apartment which was built in the shapeof a cone.
The walls were covered with scales of brass; and in the centre, on agranite pedestal, stood the statue of one of the Kabiri called Aletes,the discoverer of the mines in Celtiberia. On the ground, at its base,and arranged in the form of a cross, were large gold shields and monsterclose-necked silver vases, of extravagant shape and unfitted for use;it was customary to cast quantities of metal in this way, so thatdilapidation and even removal should be almost impossible.
With his torch he lit a miner’s lamp which was fastened to theidol’s cap, and green, yellow, blue, violet, wine-coloured, andblood-coloured fires suddenly illuminated the hall. It was filled withgems which were either in gold calabashes fastened like sconces uponsheets of brass, or were ranged in native masses at the foot of thewall. There were callaides shot away from the mountains with slings,carbuncles formed by the urine of the lynx, glossopetræ which hadfallen from the moon, tyanos, diamonds, sandastra, beryls, with thethree kinds of rubies, the four kinds of sapphires, and the twelvekinds of emeralds. They gleamed like splashes of milk, blue icicles, andsilver dust, and shed their light in sheets, rays, and stars. Ceraunia,engendered by the thunder, sparkled by the side of chalcedonies, whichare a cure for poison. There were topazes from Mount Zabarca to avertterrors, opals from Bactriana to prevent abortions, and horns of Ammon,which are placed under the bed to induce dreams.
The fires from the stones and the flames from the lamp were mirrored inthe great golden shields. Hamilcar stood smiling with folded arms, andwas less delighted by the sight of his riches than by the consciousnessof their possession. They were inaccessible, exhaustless, infinite.His ancestors sleeping beneath his feet transmitted something of theireternity to his heart. He felt very near to the subterranean deities.It was as the joy of one of the Kabiri; and the great luminous raysstriking upon his face looked like the extremity of an invisible netlinking him across the abysses with the centre of the world.
A thought came which made him shudder, and placing himself behind theidol he walked straight up to the wall. Then among the tattooings on hisarm he scrutinised a horizontal line with two other perpendicular oneswhich in Chanaanitish figures expressed the number thirteen. Then hecounted as far as the thirteenth of
the brass plates and again raisedhis ample sleeve; and with his right hand stretched out he read othermore complicated lines on his arm, at the same time moving his fingersdaintily about like one playing on a lyre. At last he struck seven blowswith his thumb, and an entire section of the wall turned about in asingle block.
It served to conceal a sort of cellar containing mysterious things whichhad no name and were of incalculable value. Hamilcar went down the threesteps, took up a llama’s skin which was floating on a black liquid ina silver vat, and then re-ascended.
Abdalonim again began to walk before him. He struck the pavement withhis tall cane, the pommel of which was adorned with bells, and beforeevery apartment cried aloud the name of Hamilcar amid eulogies andbenedictions.
Along the walls of the circular gallery, from which the passagesbranched off, were piled little beams of algummim, bags of Lawsonia,cakes of Lemnos-earth, and tortoise carapaces filled with pearls. TheSuffet brushed them with his robe as he passed without even looking atsome gigantic pieces of amber, an almost divine material formed by therays of the sun.
A cloud of odorous vapour burst forth.
“Push open the door!”
They went in.
Naked men were kneading pastes, crushing herbs, stirring coals, pouringoil into jars, and opening and shutting the little ovoid cells whichwere hollowed out all round in the wall, and were so numerous thatthe apartment was like the interior of a hive. They were brimful ofmyrobalan, bdellium, saffron, and violets. Gums, powders, roots, glassphials, branches of filipendula, and rose-petals were scattered abouteverywhere, and the scents were stifling in spite of the cloud-wreathsfrom the styrax shrivelling on a brazen tripod in the centre.
The Chief of the Sweet Odours, pale and long as a waxen torch, came upto Hamilcar to crush a roll of metopion in his hands, while two othersrubbed his heels with leaves of baccharis. He repelled them; they wereCyreneans of infamous morals, but valued on account of the secrets whichthey possessed.
To show his vigilance the Chief of the Odours offered the Suffet alittle malobathrum to taste in an electrum spoon; then he pierced threeIndian bezoars with an awl. The master, who knew the artifices employed,took a horn full of balm, and after holding it near the coals inclinedit over his robe. A brown spot appeared; it was a fraud. Then he gazedfixedly at the Chief of the Odours, and without saying anything flungthe gazelle’s horn full in his face.
However indignant he might be at adulterations made to his ownprejudice, when he perceived some parcels of nard which were beingpacked up for countries beyond the sea, he ordered antimony to be mixedwith it so as to make it heavier.
Then he asked where three boxes of psagdas designed for his own use wereto be found.
The Chief of the Odours confessed that he did not know; some soldiershad come howling in with knives and he had opened the boxes for them.
“So you are more afraid of them then of me!” cried the Suffet; andhis eyeballs flashed like torches through the smoke upon the tall, paleman who was beginning to understand. “Abdalonim! you will make him runthe gauntlet before sunset: tear him!”
This loss, which was less than the others, had exasperated him; for inspite of his efforts to banish them from his thoughts he was continuallycoming again across the Barbarians. Their excesses were blended withhis daughter’s shame, and he was angry with the whole household forknowing of the latter and for not speaking of it to him. But somethingimpelled him to bury himself in his misfortune; and in an inquisitorialfit he visited the sheds behind the mercantile house to see thesupplies of bitumen, wood, anchors and cordage, honey and wax, the clothwarehouse, the stores of food, the marble yard and the silphium barn.
He went to the other side of the gardens to make an inspection in theircottages, of the domestic artisans whose productions were sold. Therewere tailors embroidering cloaks, others making nets, others paintingcushions or cutting out sandals, and Egyptian workmen polished papyruswith a shell, while the weavers’ shuttles rattled and the armourers’anvils rang.
Hamilcar said to them:
“Beat away at the swords! I shall want them.” And he drew theantelope’s skin that had been steeped in poisons from his bosom tohave it cut into a cuirass more solid than one of brass and unassailableby steel or flame.
As soon as he approached the workmen, Abdalonim, to give his wrathanother direction, tried to anger him against them by murmureddisparagement of their work. “What a performance! It is a shame! TheMaster is indeed too good.” Hamilcar moved away without listening tohim.
He slackened his pace, for the paths were barred by great trees calcinedfrom one end to the other, such as may be met with in woods whereshepherds have encamped; and the palings were broken, the water in thetrenches was disappearing, while fragments of glass and the bones ofapes were to be seen amid the miry puddles. A scrap of cloth hunghere and there from the bushes, and the rotten flowers formed a yellowmuck-heap beneath the citron trees. In fact, the servants had neglectedeverything, thinking that the master would never return.
At every step he discovered some new disaster, some further proof of thething which he had forbidden himself to learn. Here he was soiling hispurple boots as he crushed the filth under-foot; and he had not allthese men before him at the end of a catapult to make them fly intofragments! He felt humiliated at having defended them; it was a delusionand a piece of treachery; and as he could not revenge himself uponthe soldiers, or the Ancients, or Salammbô, or anybody, and his wrathrequired some victim, he condemned all the slaves of the gardens to themines at a single stroke.
Abdalonim shuddered each time that he saw him approaching the parks. ButHamilcar took the path towards the mill, from which there might be heardissuing a mournful melopoia.
The heavy mill-stones were turning amid the dust. They consisted of twocones of porphyry laid the one upon the other—the upper one of thetwo, which carried a funnel, being made to revolve upon the second bymeans of strong bars. Some men were pushing these with their breastsand arms, while others were yoked to them and were pulling them. Thefriction of the straps had formed purulent scabs round about theirarmpits such as are seen on asses’ withers, and the end of the limpblack rag, which scarcely covered their loins, hung down and flappedagainst their hams like a long tail. Their eyes were red, the irons ontheir feet clanked, and all their breasts panted rhythmically. On theirmouths they had muzzles fastened by two little bronze chains to renderit impossible for them to eat the flour, and their hands were enclosedin gauntlets without fingers, so as to prevent them from taking any.
At the master’s entrance the wooden bars creaked still more loudly.The grain grated as it was being crushed. Several fell upon their knees;the others, continuing their work, stepped across them.
He asked for Giddenem, the governor of the slaves, and that personageappeared, his rank being displayed in the richness of his dress. Histunic, which was slit up the sides, was of fine purple; his ears wereweighted with heavy rings; and the strips of cloth enfolding his legswere joined together with a lacing of gold which extended from hisankles to his hips, like a serpent winding about a tree. In his fingers,which were laden with rings, he held a necklace of jet beads, so as torecognise the men who were subject to the sacred disease.
Hamilcar signed to him to unfasten the muzzles. Then with the cries offamished animals they all rushed upon the flour, burying their faces inthe heaps of it and devouring it.
“You are weakening them!” said the Suffet.
Giddenem replied that such treatment was necessary in order to subduethem.
“It was scarcely worth while sending you to the slaves’ school atSyracuse. Fetch the others!”
And the cooks, butlers, grooms, runners, and litter-carriers, the menbelonging to the vapour-baths, and the women with their children, allranged themselves in a single line in the garden from the mercantilehouse to the deer park. They held their breath. An immense silenceprevailed in Megara. The sun was lengthening across the lagoon at thefoot of the catacombs. The peacock
s were screeching. Hamilcar walkedalong step by step.
“What am I to do with these old creatures?” he said. “Sell them!There are too many Gauls: they are drunkards! and too many Cretans: theyare liars! Buy me some Cappadocians, Asiatics, and Negroes.”
He was astonished that the children were so few. “The house ought tohave births every year, Giddenem. You will leave the huts open everynight to let them mingle freely.”
He then had the thieves, the lazy, and the mutinous shown to him. Hedistributed punishments, with reproaches to Giddenem; and Giddenem,ox-like, bent his low forehead, with its two broad intersectingeyebrows.
“See, Eye of Baal,” he said, pointing out a sturdy Libyan, “hereis one who was caught with the rope round his neck.”
“Ah! you wish to die?” said the Suffet scornfully.
“Yes!” replied the slave in an intrepid tone.
Then, without heeding the precedent or the pecuniary loss, Hamilcar saidto the serving-men:
“Away with him!”
Perhaps in his thoughts he intended a sacrifice. It was a misfortunewhich he inflicted upon himself in order to avert more terrible ones.
Giddenem had hidden those who were mutilated behind the others. Hamilcarperceived them.
“Who cut off your arm?”
“The soldiers, Eye of Baal.”
Then to a Samnite who was staggering like a wounded heron:
“And you, who did that to you?”
It was the governor, who had broken his leg with an iron bar.
This silly atrocity made the Suffet indignant; he snatched the jetnecklace out of Giddenem’s hands.
“Cursed be the dog that injures the flock! Gracious Tanith, to crippleslaves! Ah! you ruin your master! Let him be smothered in the dunghill.And those that are missing? Where are they? Have you helped the soldiersto murder them?”
His face was so terrible that all the women fled. The slaves drew backand formed a large circle around them; Giddenem was frantically kissinghis sandals; Hamilcar stood upright with his arms raised above him.
But with his understanding as clear as in the sternest of his battles,he recalled a thousand odious things, ignominies from which he hadturned aside; and in the gleaming of his wrath he could once more seeall his disasters simultaneously as in the lightnings of a storm.The governors of the country estates had fled through terror of thesoldiers, perhaps through collusion with them; they were all deceivinghim; he had restrained himself too long.
“Bring them here!” he cried; “and brand them on the forehead withred-hot irons as cowards!”
Then they brought and spread out in the middle of the garden, fetters,carcanets, knives, chains for those condemned to the mines, cippi forfastening the legs, numellæ for confining the shoulders, and scorpionsor whips with triple thongs terminating in brass claws.
All were placed facing the sun, in the direction of Moloch the Devourer,and were stretched on the ground on their stomachs or on their backs,those, however, who were sentenced to be flogged standing uprightagainst the trees with two men beside them, one counting the blows andthe other striking.
In striking he used both his arms, and the whistling thongs made thebark of the plane-trees fly. The blood was scattered like rain upon thefoliage, and red masses writhed with howls at the foot of the trees.Those who were under the iron tore their faces with their nails.The wooden screws could be heard creaking; dull knockings resounded;sometimes a sharp cry would suddenly pierce the air. In the direction ofthe kitchens, men were brisking up burning coals with fans amidtattered garments and scattered hair, and a smell of burning flesh wasperceptible. Those who were under the scourge, swooning, but kept intheir positions by the bonds on their arms, rolled their heads upontheir shoulders and closed their eyes. The others who were watchingthem began to shriek with terror, and the lions, remembering the feastperhaps, stretched themselves out yawning against the edge of the dens.
Then Salammbô was seen on the platform of her terrace. She ran wildlyabout it from left to right. Hamilcar perceived her. It seemed to himthat she was holding up her arms towards him to ask for pardon; with agesture of horror he plunged into the elephants’ park.
These animals were the pride of the great Punic houses. They had carriedtheir ancestors, had triumphed in the wars, and they were reverenced asbeing the favourites of the Sun.
Those of Megara were the strongest in Carthage. Before he went awayHamilcar had required Abdalonim to swear that he would watch over them.But they had died from their mutilations; and only three remained, lyingin the middle of the court in the dust before the ruins of their manger.
They recognised him and came up to him. One had its ears horribly slit,another had a large wound in its knee, while the trunk of the third wascut off.
They looked sadly at him, like reasonable creatures; and the one thathad lost its trunk tried by stooping its huge head and bending its hamsto stroke him softly with the hideous extremity of its stump.
At this caress from the animal two tears started into his eyes. Herushed at Abdalonim.
“Ah! wretch! the cross! the cross!”
Abdalonim fell back swooning upon the ground.
The bark of a jackal rang from behind the purple factories, the bluesmoke of which was ascending slowly into the sky; Hamilcar paused.
The thought of his son had suddenly calmed him like the touch of agod. He caught a glimpse of a prolongation of his might, an indefinitecontinuation of his personality, and the slaves could not understandwhence this appeasement had come upon him.
As he bent his steps towards the purple factories he passed before theergastulum, which was a long house of black stone built in a square pitwith a small pathway all round it and four staircases at the corners.
Iddibal was doubtless waiting until the night to finish his signal.“There is no hurry yet,” thought Hamilcar; and he went down into theprison. Some cried out to him: “Return”; the boldest followed him.
The open door was flapping in the wind. The twilight entered throughthe narrow loopholes, and in the interior broken chains could bedistinguished hanging from the walls.
This was all that remained of the captives of war!
Then Hamilcar grew extraordinarily pale, and those who were leaningover the pit outside saw him resting one hand against the wall to keephimself from falling.
But the jackal uttered its cry three times in succession. Hamilcarraised his head; he did not speak a word nor make a gesture. Then whenthe sun had completely set he disappeared behind the nopal hedge, and inthe evening he said as he entered the assembly of the rich in the templeof Eschmoun:
“Luminaries of the Baalim, I accept the command of the Punic forcesagainst the army of the Barbarians!”