第 七 章 · HAMILCAR BARCA
. HAMILCAR BARCA
The Announcer of the Moons, who watched on the summit of the temple of
Eschmoun every night in order to signal the disturbances of the planet
with his trumpet, one morning perceived towards the west something like
a 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 the
prow. The sun was rising; the Announcer of the Moons put up his hand
before his eyes, and then grasping his clarion with outstretched arms
sounded 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. At
last 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 length
of 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 a
plough-share, would appear, and the ivory-headed horse, rearing both
its feet beneath the spur which terminated the prow, would seem to be
speeding over the plains of the sea.
As it rounded the promontory the wind ceased, the sail fell, and a man
was seen standing bareheaded beside the pilot. It was he, Hamilcar, the
Suffet! About his sides he wore gleaming sheets of steel; a red cloak,
fastened to his shoulders, left his arms visible; two pearls of great
length hung from his ears, and his black, bushy beard rested on his
breast.
The galley, however, tossing amid the rocks, was proceeding along
the side of the mole, and the crowd followed it on the flag-stones,
shouting:
“Greeting! blessing! Eye of Khamon! ah! deliver us! ’Tis the fault
of 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 had
completely deafened him. But when he was below the staircase leading
down from the Acropolis, Hamilcar raised his head, and looked with
folded 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 his
sailors; the trireme leaped forward; it grazed the idol set up at the
corner of the mole to stay the storms; and in the merchant harbour,
which was full of filth, fragments of wood, and rinds of fruit, it
pushed aside and crushed against the other ships moored to stakes and
terminating in crocodiles’ jaws. The people hastened thither, and some
threw themselves into the water to swim to it. It was already at the
very end before the gate which bristled with nails. The gate rose, and
the trireme disappeared beneath the deep arch.
The Military Harbour was completely separated from the town; when
ambassadors arrived, they had to proceed between two walls through
a passage which had its outlet on the left in front of the temple of
Khamon. This great expanse of water was as round as a cup, and was
bordered with quays on which sheds were built for sheltering the ships.
Before each of these rose two pillars bearing the horns of Ammon on
their capitals and forming continuous porticoes all round the basin. On
an island in the centre stood a house for the marine Suffet.
The water was so limpid that the bottom was visible with its paving
of white pebbles. The noise of the streets did not reach so far, and
Hamilcar as he passed recognised the triremes which he had formerly
commanded.
Not more than twenty perhaps remained, under shelter on the land,
leaning over on their sides or standing upright on their keels, with
lofty poops and swelling prows, and covered with gildings and mystic
symbols. The chimaeras had lost their wings, the Patæc Gods their arms,
the bulls their silver horns;—and half-painted, motionless, and rotten
as they were, yet full of associations, and still emitting the scent
of voyages, they all seemed to say to him, like mutilated soldiers on
seeing their master again, “’Tis we! ’Tis we! and you too are
vanquished!”
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 in
existence. In this way the Ancients avoided a master the more, and they
had not failed to comply with the custom in respect to Hamilcar.
The Suffet proceeded into the deserted apartments. At every step he
recognised armour and furniture—familiar objects which nevertheless
astonished him, and in a perfuming-pan in the vestibule there even
remained the ashes of the perfumes that had been kindled at his
departure for the conjuration of Melkarth. It was not thus that he had
hoped to return. Everything that he had done, everything that he had
seen, unfolded itself in his memory: assaults, conflagrations, legions,
tempests, Drepanum, Syracuse, Lilybæum, Mount Etna, the plateau of
Eryx, five years of battles,—until the fatal day when arms had been
laid down and Sicily had been lost. Then he once more saw the woods of
citron-trees, and herdsmen with their goats on grey mountains; and his
heart leaped at the thought of the establishment of another Carthage
down yonder. His projects and his recollections buzzed through his
head, which was still dizzy from the pitching of the vessel; he was
overwhelmed with anguish, and, becoming suddenly weak, he felt the
necessity of drawing near to the gods.
Then he went up to the highest story of his house, and taking a
nail-studded staple from a golden shell, which hung on his arm, he
opened a small oval chamber.
It was softly lighted by means of delicate black discs let into the
wall and as transparent as glass. Between the rows of these equal discs,
holes, like those for the urns in columbaria, were hollowed out. Each of
them contained a round dark stone, which appeared to be very heavy.
Only people of superior understanding honoured these abaddirs, which had
fallen from the moon. By their fall they denoted the stars, the sky, and
fire; by their colour dark night, and by their density the cohesion of
terrestrial things. A stifling atmosphere filled this mystic place. The
round stones lying in the niches were whitened somewhat with sea-sand
which the wind had no doubt driven through the door. Hamilcar counted
them one after another with the tip of his finger; then he hid his face
in a saffron-coloured veil, and, falling on his knees, stretched himself
on the ground with both arms extended.
The daylight outside was beginning to strike on the folding shutters
of black lattice-work. Arborescences, hillocks, eddies, and ill-defined
animals appeared in their diaphanous thickness; and the light came
terrifying and yet peaceful as it must be behind the sun in the dull
spaces of future creations. He strove to banish from his thoughts all
forms, and all symbols and appellations of the gods, that he might the
better apprehend the immutable spirit which outward appearances took
away. Something of the planetary vitalities penetrated him, and he felt
withal a wiser and more intimate scorn of death and of every accident.
When he rose he was filled with serene fearlessness and was proof
against pity or dread, and as his chest was choking he went to the top
of the tower which overlooked Carthage.
The town sank downwards in a long hollow curve, with its cupolas, its
temples, its golden roofs, its houses, its clusters of palm trees here
and there, and its glass balls with streaming rays, while the ramparts
formed, as it were, the gigantic border of this horn of plenty which
poured itself out before him. Far below he could see the harbours, the
squares, the interiors of the courts, the plan of the streets, and the
people, who seemed very small and but little above the level of the
pavement. Ah! if Hanno had not arrived too late on the morning of
the Ægatian islands! He fastened his eyes on the extreme horizon and
stretched forth his quivering arms in the direction of Rome.
The steps of the Acropolis were occupied by the multitude. In the square
of Khamon the people were pressing forwards to see the Suffet come
out, and the terraces were gradually being loaded with people; a few
recognised him, and he was saluted; but he retired in order the better
to 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 him
all that had taken place since the conclusion of the peace: the greed
of the Ancients, the departure of the soldiers, their return, their
demands, the capture of Gisco, the theft of the zaïmph, the relief and
subsequent abandonment of Utica; but no one ventured to tell him of the
events which concerned himself. At last they separated, to meet again
during the night at the assembly of the Ancients in the temple of
Moloch.
They had just gone out when a tumult arose outside the door. Some one
was trying to enter in spite of the servants; and as the disturbance was
increasing 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 advanced
face to face with the Suffet, and they looked at each other for some
time; suddenly Hamilcar started; at a wave of his hand the slaves
withdrew. Then, signing to her to walk with precaution, he drew her by
the arm into a remote apartment.
The Negress threw herself upon the floor to kiss his feet; he raised her
brutally.
“Where have you left him, Iddibal?”
“Down there, Master;” and extricating herself from her veils, she
rubbed her face with her sleeve; the black colour, the senile trembling,
the bent figure disappeared, and there remained a strong old man whose
skin seemed tanned by sand, wind, and sea. A tuft of white hair rose on
his skull like the crest of a bird; and he indicated his disguise, as it
lay on the ground, with an ironic glance.
“You have done well, Iddibal! ’Tis well!” Then piercing him, as it
were, 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 from
Hadrumetum, on a shore peopled with turtles, and with palms on the dune.
“And in accordance with your command, O Master! I teach him to hurl
the javelin and to drive a team.”
“He is strong, is he not?”
“Yes, Master, and intrepid as well! He has no fear of serpents, or
thunder, or phantoms. He runs bare-footed like a herdsman along the
brinks of precipices.”
“Speak! speak!”
“He invents snares for wild beasts. Would you believe it, that last
moon he surprised an eagle; he dragged it away, and the bird’s blood
and the child’s were scattered in the air in large drops like driven
roses. The animal in its fury enwrapped him in the beating of its
wings; he strained it against his breast, and as it died his laughter
increased, 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 at
the sails passing far out at sea; he is melancholy, he rejects bread,
he inquires about the gods, and he wishes to become acquainted with
Carthage.”
“No, no! not yet!” exclaimed the Suffet.
The old slave seemed to understand the peril which alarmed Hamilcar, and
he resumed:
“How is he to be restrained? Already I am obliged to make him
promises, and I have come to Carthage only to buy him a dagger with
a silver handle and pearls all around it.” Then he told how, having
perceived the Suffet on the terrace, he had passed himself off on the
warders of the harbour as one of Salammbô’s women, so as to make his
way in to him.
Hamilcar remained for a long time apparently lost in deliberation; at
last he said:
“To-morrow you will present yourself at sunset behind the purple
factories in Megara, and imitate a jackal’s cry three times. If you do
not 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 harbour
together.
Hamilcar went on his way alone on foot and without an escort, for the
meetings of the Ancients were, under extraordinary circumstances, always
secret, and were resorted to mysteriously.
At first he went along the western front of the Acropolis, and then
passed through the Green Market, the galleries of Kinisdo, and the
Perfumers’ suburb. The scattered lights were being extinguished, the
broader streets grew still, then shadows glided through the darkness.
They followed him, others appeared, and like him they all directed their
course towards the Mappalian district.
The temple of Moloch was built at the foot of a steep defile in a
sinister spot. From below nothing could be seen but lofty walls rising
indefinitely like those of a monstrous tomb. The night was gloomy, a
greyish fog seemed to weigh upon the sea, which beat against the cliff
with a noise as of death-rattles and sobs; and the shadows gradually
vanished as if they had passed through the walls.
But as soon as the doorway was crossed one found oneself in a vast
quadrangular court bordered by arcades. In the centre rose a mass of
architecture with eight equal faces. It was surmounted by cupolas which
thronged around a second story supporting a kind of rotunda, from which
sprang a cone with a re-entrant curve and terminating in a ball on the
summit.
Fires were burning in cylinders of filigree-work fitted upon poles,
which men were carrying to and fro. These lights flickered in the gusts
of wind and reddened the golden combs which fastened their plaited
hair on the nape of the neck. They ran about calling to one another to
receive the Ancients.
Here and there on the flag-stones huge lions were couched like
sphinxes, living symbols of the devouring sun. They were slumbering with
half-closed eyelids. But roused by the footsteps and voices they rose
slowly, came towards the Ancients, whom they recognised by their dress,
and rubbed themselves against their thighs, arching their backs with
sonorous yawns; the vapour of their breath passed across the light of
the torches. The stir increased, doors closed, all the priests fled,
and the Ancients disappeared beneath the columns which formed a deep
vestibule round the temple.
These columns were arranged in such a way that their circular ranks,
which were contained one within another, showed the Saturnian period
with its years, the years with their months, and the months with their
days, and finally reached to the walls of the sanctuary.
Here it was that the Ancients laid aside their sticks of
narwhal’s-horn,—for a law which was always observed inflicted the
punishment of death upon any one entering the meeting with any kind
of weapon. Several wore a rent repaired with a strip of purple at the
bottom of their garment, to show that they had not been economical in
their dress when mourning for their relatives, and this testimony to
their affliction prevented the slit from growing larger. Others had
their beards inclosed in little bags of violet skin, and fastened to
their ears by two cords. They all accosted one another by embracing
breast to breast. They surrounded Hamilcar with congratulations; they
might have been taken for brothers meeting their brother again.
These men were generally thick-set, with curved noses like those of the
Assyrian colossi. In a few, however, the more prominent cheek-bone, the
taller figure, and the narrower foot, betrayed an African origin
and nomad ancestors. Those who lived continually shut up in their
counting-houses had pale faces; others showed in theirs the severity
of the desert, and strange jewels sparkled on all the fingers of
their hands, which were burnt by unknown suns. The navigators might be
distinguished by their rolling gait, while the men of agriculture
smelt of the wine-press, dried herbs, and the sweat of mules. These
old pirates had lands under tillage, these money-grubbers would fit
out ships, these proprietors of cultivated lands supported slaves who
followed trades. All were skilled in religious discipline, expert in
strategy, pitiless and rich. They looked wearied of prolonged cares.
Their flaming eyes expressed distrust, and their habits of travelling
and lying, trafficking and commanding, gave an appearance of cunning
and violence, a sort of discreet and convulsive brutality to their whole
demeanour. 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 squares
of different colours against the wall. After traversing a long room they
entered another similar hall.
A candelabrum completely covered with chiselled flowers was burning at
the far end, and each of its eight golden branches bore a wick of byssus
in a diamond chalice. It was placed upon the last of the long steps
leading to a great altar, the corners of which terminated in horns of
brass. Two lateral staircases led to its flattened summit; the stones
of it could not be seen; it was like a mountain of heaped cinders, and
something indistinct was slowly smoking at the top of it. Then further
back, higher than the candelabrum, and much higher than the altar, rose
the Moloch, all of iron, and with gaping apertures in his human breast.
His outspread wings were stretched upon the wall, his tapering hands
reached down to the ground; three black stones bordered by yellow
circles represented three eyeballs on his brow, and his bull’s head
was raised with a terrible effort as if in order to bellow.
Ebony stools were ranged round the apartment. Behind each of them was
a bronze shaft resting on three claws and supporting a torch. All these
lights were reflected in the mother-of-pearl lozenges which formed the
pavement of the hall. So lofty was the latter that the red colour of the
walls grew black as it rose towards the vaulted roof, and the three eyes
of the idol appeared far above like stars half lost in the night.
The Ancients sat down on the ebony stools after putting the trains of
their robes over their heads. They remained motionless with their hands
crossed inside their broad sleeves, and the mother-of-pearl pavement
seemed like a luminous river streaming from the altar to the door and
flowing beneath their naked feet.
The four pontiffs had their places in the centre, sitting back to back
on four ivory seats which formed a cross, the high-priest of Eschmoun
in a hyacinth robe, the high-priest of Tanith in a white linen robe, the
high-priest of Khamon in a tawny woollen robe, and the high-priest of
Moloch 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 hundred
Ancients, the four pontiffs, and Hamilcar, who remained standing,
simultaneously intoned a hymn, and their voices—ever repeating the
same syllables and strengthening the sounds—rose, grew loud, became
terrible, and then suddenly were still.
There was a pause for some time. At last Hamilcar drew from his breast a
little three-headed statuette, as blue as sapphire, and placed it before
him. It was the image of Truth, the very genius of his speech. Then he
replaced it in his bosom, and all, as if seized with sudden wrath, cried
out:
“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 political
ceremonial had just obliged them; and even though they had wished for
Hamilcar’s return, they were now indignant that he had not anticipated
their 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 have
seen 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 intrepid
men among you! Gisco, rise!” And surveying the step of the altar with
half-closed eyelids, as if he sought for some one, he repeated:
“Rise, Gisco! You can accuse me; they will protect you! But where is
he?” Then, as if he remembered himself: “Ah! in his house, no doubt!
surrounded by his sons, commanding his slaves, happy, and counting on
the wall the necklaces of honour which his country has given to him!”
They moved about raising their shoulders as if they were being scourged
with thongs. “You do not even know whether he is living or dead!”
And without giving any heed to their clamours he said that in deserting
the Suffet they had deserted the Republic. So, too, the peace with Rome,
however advantageous it might appear to them, was more fatal than twenty
battles. A few—those who were the least rich of the Council and
were suspected of perpetual leanings towards the people or towards
tyranny—applauded. Their opponents, chiefs of the Syssitia and
administrators, triumphed over them in point of numbers; and the more
eminent of them had ranged themselves close to Hanno, who was sitting at
the other end of the hall before the lofty door, which was closed by a
hanging of hyacinth colour.
He had covered the ulcers on his face with paint. But the gold dust in
his hair had fallen upon his shoulders, where it formed two brilliant
sheets, so that his hair appeared whitish, fine, and frizzled like wool.
His hands were enveloped in linen soaked in a greasy perfume, which
dripped upon the pavement, and his disease had no doubt considerably
increased, 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 to
speak. At last in a hoarse and hideous voice he said:
“Less arrogance, Barca! We have all been vanquished! Each one supports
his own misfortune! Be resigned!”
“Tell us rather,” said Hamilcar, smiling, “how it was that you
steered your galleys into the Roman fleet?”
“I was driven by the wind,” replied Hanno.
“You are like a rhinoceros trampling on his dung: you are
displaying your own folly! be silent!” And they began to indulge in
recriminations 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 stood
out from the coast; what prevented you? Ah! I forgot! all elephants are
afraid of the sea!”
Hamilcar’s followers thought this jest so good that they burst
out into loud laughter. The vault rang with it like the beating of
tympanums.
Hanno denounced the unworthiness of such an insult; the disease had
come upon him from a cold taken at the siege of Hecatompylos, and tears
flowed 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 in
Carthage now! How many times did I not call upon you! and you always
refused me money!”
“We had need of it,” said the chiefs of the Syssitia.
“And when things were desperate with me—we drank mules’ urine and
ate the straps of our sandals; when I would fain have had the blades of
grass soldiers and made battalions with the rottenness of our dead, you
recalled the vessels that I had left!”
“We could not risk everything,” replied Baat-Baal, who possessed
gold mines in Darytian Gætulia.
“But what did you do here, at Carthage, in your houses, behind your
walls? There are Gauls on the Eridanus, who ought to have been roused,
Chanaanites at Cyrene who would have come, and while the Romans send
ambassadors 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, of
Metapontum, and of Heraclea! I have burnt all their trees, I
have pillaged all their temples, and even to the death of their
grandchildren’s grandchildren—”
“Why, you disclaim like a rhetor!” said Kapouras, a very illustrious
merchant. “What is it that you want?”
“I say that we must be more ingenious or more terrible! If the whole
of Africa rejects your yoke the reason is, my feeble masters, that you
do not know how to fasten it to her shoulders! Agathocles, Regulus,
Copio, any bold man has only to land and capture her; and when the
Libyans in the east concert with the Numidians in the west, and the
Nomads come from the south, and the Romans from the north”—a cry of
horror 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 the
mill-stone in the Suburra, and gather grapes on the hills of Latium.”
They smote their right thighs to mark their sense of the scandal, and
the sleeves of their robes rose like large wings of startled birds.
Hamilcar, carried away by a spirit, continued his speech, standing on
the highest step of the altar, quivering and terrible; he raised his
arms, and the rays from the candelabrum which burned behind him passed
between his fingers like javelins of gold.
“You will lose your ships, your country seats, your chariots, your
hanging beds, and the slaves who rub your feet! The jackal will crouch
in your palaces, and the ploughshare will upturn your tombs. Nothing
will 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 had
risen. But the marine Suffet, being a sacerdotal magistrate under the
protection of the Sun, was inviolate so long as the assembly of the
rich had not judged him. Terror was associated with the altar. They drew
back.
Hamilcar had ceased speaking, and was panting with eye fixed, his face
as pale as the pearls of his tiara, almost frightened at himself, and
his 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 of
fire laid level with the pavement; black smoke issuing from them mounted
up into the darkness of the vault; and for some minutes the silence was
so profound that they could hear in the distance the sound of the sea.
Then the Ancients began to question one another. Their interests, their
existence, were attacked by the Barbarians. But it was impossible to
conquer them without the assistance of the Suffet, and in spite of their
pride this consideration made them forget every other. His friends were
taken aside. There were interested reconciliations, understandings, and
promises. Hamilcar would not take any further part in any government.
All conjured him. They besought him; and as the word treason occurred
in their speech, he fell into a passion. The sole traitor was the Great
Council, for as the enlistment of the soldiers expired with the war,
they became free as soon as the war was finished; he even exalted their
bravery and all the advantages which might be derived from interesting
them in the Republic by donations and privileges.
Then Magdassin, a former provincial governor, said, as he rolled his
yellow eyes:
“Truly Barca, with your travelling you have become a Greek, or a
Latin, or something! Why speak you of rewards for these men? Rather let
ten thousand Barbarians perish than a single one of us!”
The Ancients nodded approval, murmuring:—“Yes, is there need for so
much trouble? They can always be had?”
“And they can be got rid of conveniently, can they not? They are
deserted as they were by you in Sardinia. The enemy is apprised of the
road 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 was
returning 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 the
others.
“Why, then,” exclaimed Hamilcar, “did you recall them to Carthage,
notwithstanding your laws? And when they are in your town, poor and
numerous amid all your riches, it does not occur to you to weaken them
by the slightest division! Afterwards you dismiss the whole of them
with their women and children, without keeping a single hostage! Did
you expect that they would murder themselves to spare you the pain of
keeping your oaths? You hate them because they are strong! You hate me
still more, who am their master! Oh! I felt it just now when you were
kissing my hands and were all putting a constraint upon yourselves not
to bite them!”
If the lions that were sleeping in the court had come howling in, the
uproar could not have been more frightful. But the pontiff of Eschmoun
rose, 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 of
the 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, all
the captives, all the booty, fifty zereths of land for every enemy’s
corpse.”
“No! no! because it is impossible to conquer with you!”
“He is afraid!”
“Because you are cowardly, greedy, ungrateful, pusillanimous and
mad!”
“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 the
hall Hanno howled:
“He wants to make himself king!”
Then they bounded up, overturning the seats and the torches: the crowd
of them rushed towards the altar; they brandished daggers. But Hamilcar
dived into his sleeves and drew from them two broad cutlasses; and
half stooping, his left foot advanced, his eyes flaming and his
teeth clenched, he defied them as he stood there beneath the golden
candelabrum.
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 one
became quickly reassured; and by degrees they turned their backs on the
Suffet and came down again maddened with humiliation. For the second
time they recoiled before him. They remained standing for some time.
Several who had wounded their fingers put them to their mouths or rolled
them gently in the hem of their mantles, and they were about to depart
when 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. But
the priest of Tanith had alone remained in his place; and Hamilcar could
see only his lofty cap in the distance. All were sneering in his face.
In proportion as his anguish increased their joy redoubled, and those
who 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 its
eight mystic rows, and with an emerald shell in the centre—and with
both hands and with all his strength dashed it to the ground; the golden
circles 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 like
a serpent between his eyebrows; all his limbs trembled. He ascended one
of the lateral staircases which led on to the altar, and walked upon
the latter! This was to devote himself to the god, to offer himself as
a holocaust. The motion of his mantle agitated the lights of the
candelabrum, which was lower than his sandals, and the fine dust raised
by his footsteps surrounded him like a cloud as high as the waist. He
stopped between the legs of the brass colossus. He took up two handfuls
of the dust, the mere sight of which made every Carthaginian shudder
with horror, and said:
“By the hundred torches of your Intelligences! by the eight fires of
the Kabiri! by the stars, the meteors, and the volcanoes! by everything
that 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! by
the ashes of your sons and the ashes of the brothers of your ancestors
with which I now mingle my own!—you, the Hundred of the Council of
Carthage, have lied in your accusation of my daughter! And I, Hamilcar
Barca, marine Suffet, chief of the rich and ruler of the people, in the
presence of bull-headed Moloch, I swear”—they expected something
frightful, but he resumed in a loftier and calmer tone—“that I will
not even speak to her about it!”
The sacred servants entered wearing their golden combs, some with purple
sponges and others with branches of palm. They raised the hyacinth
curtain which was stretched before the door; and through the opening of
this angle there was visible behind the other halls the great pink
sky which seemed to be a continuation of the vault and to rest at
the horizon upon the blue sea. The sun was issuing from the waves and
mounting upwards. It suddenly struck upon the breast of the brazen
colossus, which was divided into seven compartments closed by gratings.
His red-toothed jaws opened in a horrible yawn; his enormous nostrils
were dilated, the broad daylight animated him, and gave him a terrible
and impatient aspect, as if he would fain have leaped without to mingle
with the star, the god, and together traverse the immensities.
The torches, however, which were scattered on the ground, were still
burning, while here and there on the mother-of-pearl pavement was
stretched from them what looked like spots of blood. The Ancients were
reeling from exhaustion; they filled their lungs inhaling the freshness
of the air; the sweat flowed down their livid faces; they had shouted
so much that they could now scarcely make their voices heard. But their
wrath against the Suffet was not at all abated; they hurled menaces at
him 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 a
calm demeanour.
Their runners and coachmen were waiting for them at the door. Most of
them departed on white mules. The Suffet leaped into his chariot and
took the reins; the two animals, curving their necks, and rhythmically
beating the resounding pebbles, went up the whole of the Mappalian Way
at full gallop, and the silver vulture at the extremity of the pole
seemed to fly, so quickly did the chariot pass along.
The road crossed a field planted with slabs of stone, which were painted
on the top like pyramids, and had open hands carved out in the centre as
if all the dead men lying beneath had stretched them out towards heaven
to demand something. Next there came scattered cabins built of earth,
branches, and bulrush-hurdles, and all of a conical shape. These
dwellings, which became constantly denser as the road ascended towards
the Suffet’s gardens, were irregularly separated from one another by
little 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 first
being built of stone, the second of brick, and the third all of
cedar—supporting a copper cupola upon twenty-four pillars of juniper,
from which slender interlacing chains of brass hung down after the
manner of garlands. This lofty edifice overlooked the buildings—the
emporiums and mercantile houses—which stretched to the right, while
the women’s palace rose at the end of the cypress trees, which were
ranged in line like two walls of bronze.
When the echoing chariot had entered through the narrow gateway it
stopped beneath a broad shed in which there were shackled horses eating
from heaps of chopped grass.
All the servants hastened up. They formed quite a multitude, those who
worked on the country estates having been brought to Carthage through
fear of the soldiers. The labourers, who were clad in animals’ skins,
had chains riveted to their ankles and trailing after them; the workers
in the purple factories had arms as red as those of executioners; the
sailors wore green caps; the fishermen coral necklaces; the huntsmen
carried nets on their shoulders; and the people belonging to Megara
wore black or white tunics, leathern drawers, and caps of straw, felt or
linen, according to their service or their different occupations.
Behind pressed a tattered populace. They lived without employment remote
from the apartments, slept at night in the gardens, ate the refuse
from the kitchens,—a human mouldiness vegetating in the shadow of
the palace. Hamilcar tolerated them from foresight even more than from
scorn. They had all put a flower in the ear in token of their joy, and
many of them had never seen him.
But men with head-dresses like the Sphinx’s, and furnished with great
sticks, dashed into the crowd, striking right and left. This was to
drive back the slaves, who were curious to see their master, so that he
might 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 as
they lay thus on the ground in the avenue of cypress trees, Abdalonim,
the Steward of the stewards, waving a white mitre, advanced towards
Hamilcar with a censer in his hand.
Salammbô was then coming down the galley staircases. All her slave
women followed her; and, at each of her steps, they also descended. The
heads of the Negresses formed big black spots on the line of the bands
of the golden plates clasping the foreheads of the Roman women. Others
had silver arrows, emerald butterflies, or long bodkins set like suns in
their hair. Rings, clasps, necklaces, fringes, and bracelets shone amid
the confusion of white, yellow, and blue garments; a rustling of
light material became audible; the pattering of sandals might be heard
together with the dull sound of naked feet as they were set down on the
wood;—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 subsided
they hid their faces in their sleeves, and together uttered a strange
cry like the howling of a she-wolf, and so frenzied and strident was
it that it seemed to make the great ebony staircase, with its thronging
women, vibrate from top to bottom like a lyre.
The wind lifted their veils, and the slender stems of the papyrus plant
rocked gently. It was the month of Schebaz and the depth of winter. The
flowering pomegranates swelled against the azure of the sky, and the
sea disappeared through the branches with an island in the distance half
lost in the mist.
Hamilcar stopped on perceiving Salammbô. She had come to him after the
death of several male children. Moreover, the birth of daughters
was considered a calamity in the religions of the Sun. The gods had
afterwards sent him a son; but he still felt something of the betrayal
of his hope, and the shock, as it were, of the curse which he had
uttered against her. Salammbô, however, continued to advance.
Long bunches of various-coloured pearls fell from her ears to her
shoulders, and as far as her elbows. Her hair was crisped so as to
simulate a cloud. Round her neck she wore little quadrangular plates of
gold, representing a woman between two rampant lions; and her costume
was a complete reproduction of the equipment of the goddess. Her
broad-sleeved hyacinth robe fitted close to her figure, widening out
below. 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 was
extraordinarily pale, doubtless on account of the cold.
At last she came close to Hamilcar, and without looking at him, without
raising 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 beneath
your gaze, O father, joyfulness and a new existence will everywhere
prevail!”
And taking from Taanach’s hands a little oblong vase wherein smoked
a mixture of meal, butter, cardamom, and wine: “Drink freely,” said
she, “of the returning cup, which your servant has prepared!”
He replied: “A blessing upon you!” and he mechanically grasped the
golden vase which she held out to him.
He scanned her, however, with such harsh attention, that Salammbô was
troubled 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 he
added a few vague words upon the public embarrassments which he hoped by
his sole efforts to clear away.
“O father!” exclaimed Salammbô, “you will not obliterate what is
irreparable!”
Then he drew back and Salammbô was astonished at his amazement; for
she was not thinking of Carthage but of the sacrilege in which she found
herself implicated. This man, who made legions tremble and whom she
hardly 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; and
yet she felt stifled with the need of complaining and being comforted.
Hamilcar was struggling against a longing to break his oath. He kept it
out of pride or from the dread of putting an end to his uncertainty; and
he looked into her face with all his might so as to lay hold on what she
kept concealed at the bottom of her heart.
By degrees the panting Salammbô, crushed by such heavy looks, let her
head sink below her shoulders. He was now sure that she had erred in
the embrace of a Barbarian; he shuddered and raised both his fists. She
uttered 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 hall
form which long passages leading to other halls branched off like the
spokes from the nave of a wheel. A stone disc stood in the centre with
balustrades to support the cushions that were heaped up upon carpets.
The Suffet walked at first with rapid strides; he breathed noisily, he
struck the ground with his heel, and drew his hand across his forehead
like a man annoyed by flies. But he shook his head, and as he perceived
the accumulation of his riches he became calm; his thoughts, which were
attracted by the vistas in the passages, wandered to the other halls
that were full of still rarer treasures. Bronze plates, silver ingots,
and iron bars alternated with pigs of tin brought from the Cassiterides
over the Dark Sea; gums from the country of the Blacks were running over
their bags of palm bark; and gold dust heaped up in leathern bottles was
insensibly creeping out through the worn-out seams. Delicate filaments
drawn from marine plants hung amid flax from Egypt, Greece, Taprobane
and Judæa; mandrepores bristled like large bushes at the foot of the
walls; and an indefinable odour—the exhalation from perfumes, leather,
spices, and ostrich feathers, the latter tied in great bunches at the
very top of the vault—floated through the air. An arch was formed
above the door before each passage with elephants’ teeth placed
upright and meeting together at the points.
At last he ascended the stone disc. All the stewards stood with arms
folded and heads bent while Abdalonim reared his pointed mitre with a
haughty air.
Hamilcar questioned the Chief of the Ships. He was an old pilot with
eyelids chafed by the wind, and white locks fell to his hips as if
dashing foam of the tempests had remained on his beard.
He replied that he had sent a fleet by Gades and Thymiamata to try to
reach Eziongaber by doubling the Southern Horn and the promontory of
Aromata.
Others had advanced continuously towards the west for four moons without
meeting with any shore; but the ships prows became entangled in
weeds, the horizon echoed continually with the noise of cataracts,
blood-coloured mists darkened the sun, a perfume-laden breeze lulled the
crews to sleep; and their memories were so disturbed that they were now
unable to tell anything. However, expeditions had ascended the rivers of
the Scythians, had made their way into Colchis, and into the countries
of the Jugrians and of the Estians, had carried off fifteen hundred
maidens in the Archipelago, and sunk all the strange vessels sailing
beyond Cape Oestrymon, so that the secret of the routes should not
be known. King Ptolemæus was detaining the incense from Schesbar;
Syracuse, Elathia, Corsica, and the islands had furnished nothing, and
the old pilot lowered his voice to announce that a trireme was taken at
Rusicada by the Numidians,—“for they are with them, Master.”
Hamilcar knit his brows; then he signed to the Chief of the Journeys to
speak. This functionary was enveloped in a brown, ungirdled robe, and
had his head covered with a long scarf of white stuff which passed along
the edge of his lips and fell upon his shoulder behind.
The caravans had set out regularly at the winter equinox. But of fifteen
hundred men directing their course towards the extreme boundaries of
Ethiopia with excellent camels, new leathern bottles, and supplies of
painted cloth, but one had reappeared at Carthage—the rest having died
of fatigue or become mad through the terror of the desert;—and he said
that far beyond the Black Harousch, after passing the Atarantes and the
country of the great apes, he had seen immense kingdoms, wherein the
pettiest utensils were all of gold, a river of the colour of milk and
as broad as the sea, forests of blue trees, hills of aromatics, monsters
with human faces vegetating on the rocks with eyeballs which expanded
like flowers to look at you; and then crystal mountains supporting the
sun behind lakes all covered with dragons. Others had returned from
India with peacocks, pepper, and new textures. As to those who go by way
of the Syrtes and the temple of Ammon to purchase chalcedony, they had
no doubt perished in the sands. The caravans from Gætulia and Phazzana
had 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 of
Farms was so afraid to speak that he trembled horribly in spite of
his thick shoulders and his big red eyeballs. His face, which was as
snub-nosed as a mastiff’s, was surmounted by a net woven of threads
of bark. He wore a waist-belt of hairy leopard’s skin, wherein gleamed
two formidable cutlasses.
As soon as Hamilcar turned away he began to cry aloud and invoke all the
Baals. It was not his fault! he could not help it! He had watched the
temperature, the soil, the stars, had planted at the winter solstice and
pruned at the waning of the moon, had inspected the slaves and had been
careful of their clothes.
But Hamilcar grew angry at this loquacity. He clacked his tongue, and
the 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 at
Maschala, and at Ubada the granaries have been looted and the cisterns
filled up! At Tedes they have carried off fifteen hundred gomors of
meal; at Marrazana they have killed the shepherds, eaten the flocks,
burnt your house—your beautiful house with its cedar beams, which
you used to visit in the summer! The slaves at Tuburbo who were reaping
barley fled to the mountains; and the asses, the mules both great and
small, the oxen from Taormina, and the antelopes,—not a single one
left! all carried away! It is a curse! I shall not survive it!” He
went on again in tears: “Ah! if you knew how full the cellars
were, and how the ploughshares shone! Ah! the fine rams! ah! the fine
bulls!—”
Hamilcar’s wrath was choking him. It burst forth:
“Be silent! Am I a pauper then? No lies! speak the truth! I wish
to 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 the
farms, of the house! And if your consciences are not clear, woe be on
your heads! Go out!”
All the stewards went out walking backwards, with their fists touching
the ground.
Abdalonim went up to a set of pigeon-holes in the wall, and from the
midst of them took out knotted cords, strips of linen or papyrus, and
sheeps’ shoulder-blades inscribed with delicate writing. He laid them
at Hamilcar’s feet, placed in his hands a wooden frame furnished on
the inside with three threads on which balls of gold, silver, and horn
were strung, and began:
“One hundred and ninety-two houses in the Mappalian district let to
the New Carthaginians at the rate of one bekah a moon.”
“No! it is too much! be lenient towards the poor people! and you will
try to learn whether they are attached to the Republic, and write
down the names of those who appear to you to be the most daring! What
next?”
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 per
cent., maritime interest; to Bar-Malkarth fifteen hundred shekels on the
security 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 always
lend, and at different rates of interest, according to the wealth of the
individual.”
Then the servant hastened to read all that had been brought in by the
iron-mines of Annaba, the coral fisheries, the purple factories, the
farming of the tax on the resident Greeks, the export of silver to
Arabia, where it had ten times the value of gold, and the captures of
vessels, deduction of a tenth being made for the temple of the goddess.
“Each time I declared a quarter less, Master!” Hamilcar was
reckoning with the balls; they rang beneath his fingers.
“Enough! What have you paid?”
“To Stratonicles of Corinth, and to three Alexandrian merchants, on
these letters here (they have been realised), ten thousand Athenian
drachmas, 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 necessary
to throw the cargo into the seas, and so the unequal losses have been
divided among the partners. For the ropes which were borrowed from the
arsenals, and which it was impossible to restore, the Syssitia exacted
eight hundred kesitahs before the expedition to Utica.”
“They again!” said Hamilcar, hanging his head; and he remained for a
time as if quite crushed by the weight of all the hatreds that he could
feel upon him. “But I do not see the Megara expenses?”
Abdalonim, turning pale, went to another set of pigeon-holes, and
took from them some planchettes of sycamore wood strung in packets on
leathern strings.
Hamilcar, curious about these domestic details, listened to him and
grew calm with the monotony of the tones in which the figures were
enumerated. Abdalonim became slower. Suddenly he let the wooden sheets
fall to the ground and threw himself flat on his face with his arms
stretched out in the position of a condemned criminal. Hamilcar picked
up the tablets without any emotion; and his lips parted and his eyes
grew larger when he perceived an exorbitant consumption of meat, fish,
birds, wines, and aromatics, with broken vases, dead slaves, and spoiled
carpets 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 the
soldiers.
At his daughter’s name Hamilcar leaped to his feet. Then with
compressed lips he crouched down upon the cushions, tearing the fringes
with his nails, and panting with staring eyes.
“Rise!” said he; and he descended.
Abdalonim followed him; his knees trembled. But seizing an iron bar he
began like one distraught to loosen the paving stones. A wooden disc
sprang up and soon there appeared throughout the length of the passage
several of the large covers employed for stopping up the trenches in
which grain was kept.
“You see, Eye of Baal,” said the servant, trembling, “they have
not taken everything yet! and these are each fifty cubits deep and
filled up to the brim! During your voyage I had them dug out in the
arsenals, in the gardens, everywhere! your house is full of corn as your
heart 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 keep
it! 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 quadrangular
chamber divided in the centre by pillars of cedar. Gold, silver, and
brass coins were arranged on tables or packed into niches, and rose
as high as the joists of the roof along the four walls. In the corners
there were huge baskets of hippopotamus skin supporting whole rows of
smaller bags; there were hillocks formed of heaps of bullion on the
pavement; and here and there a pile that was too high had given way and
looked like a ruined column. The large Carthaginian pieces, representing
Tanith with a horse beneath a palm-tree, mingled with those from the
colonies, which were marked with a bull, star, globe, or crescent. Then
there might be seen pieces of all values, dimensions, and ages arrayed
in unequal amounts—from the ancient coins of Assyria, slender as the
nail, to the ancient ones of Latium, thicker than the hand, with the
buttons of Egina, the tablets of Bactriana, and the short bars of
Lacedæmon; many were covered with rust, or had grown greasy, or, having
been taken in nets or from among the ruins of captured cities, were
green with the water or blackened by fire. The Suffet had speedily
calculated whether the sums present corresponded with the gains and
losses which had just been read to him; and he was going away when he
perceived three brass jars completely empty. Abdalonim turned away his
head to mark his horror, and Hamilcar, resigning himself to it, said
nothing.
They crossed other passages and other halls, and at last reached a door
where, to ensure its better protection and in accordance with a Roman
custom lately introduced into Carthage, a man was fastened by the waist
to a long chain let into the wall. His beard and nails had grown to an
immoderate length, and he swayed himself from right to left with that
continual oscillation which is characteristic of captive animals. As
soon as he recognised Hamilcar he darted towards him, crying:
“Pardon, Eye of Baal! pity! kill me! For ten years I have not seen the
sun! In your father’s name, pardon!”
Hamilcar, without answering him, clapped his hands and three men
appeared; and all four simultaneously stiffening their arms, drew back
from its rings the enormous bar which closed the door. Hamilcar took a
torch and disappeared into the darkness.
This was believed to be the family burying-place; but nothing would have
been found in it except a broad well. It was dug out merely to baffle
robbers, and it concealed nothing. Hamilcar passed along beside it; then
stooping down he made a very heavy millstone turn upon its rollers, and
through this aperture entered an apartment which was built in the shape
of a cone.
The walls were covered with scales of brass; and in the centre, on a
granite 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 monster
close-necked silver vases, of extravagant shape and unfitted for use;
it was customary to cast quantities of metal in this way, so that
dilapidation and even removal should be almost impossible.
With his torch he lit a miner’s lamp which was fastened to the
idol’s cap, and green, yellow, blue, violet, wine-coloured, and
blood-coloured fires suddenly illuminated the hall. It was filled with
gems which were either in gold calabashes fastened like sconces upon
sheets of brass, or were ranged in native masses at the foot of the
wall. There were callaides shot away from the mountains with slings,
carbuncles formed by the urine of the lynx, glossopetræ which had
fallen from the moon, tyanos, diamonds, sandastra, beryls, with the
three kinds of rubies, the four kinds of sapphires, and the twelve
kinds of emeralds. They gleamed like splashes of milk, blue icicles, and
silver dust, and shed their light in sheets, rays, and stars. Ceraunia,
engendered by the thunder, sparkled by the side of chalcedonies, which
are a cure for poison. There were topazes from Mount Zabarca to avert
terrors, 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 in
the great golden shields. Hamilcar stood smiling with folded arms, and
was less delighted by the sight of his riches than by the consciousness
of their possession. They were inaccessible, exhaustless, infinite.
His ancestors sleeping beneath his feet transmitted something of their
eternity 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 rays
striking upon his face looked like the extremity of an invisible net
linking him across the abysses with the centre of the world.
A thought came which made him shudder, and placing himself behind the
idol he walked straight up to the wall. Then among the tattooings on his
arm he scrutinised a horizontal line with two other perpendicular ones
which in Chanaanitish figures expressed the number thirteen. Then he
counted as far as the thirteenth of the brass plates and again raised
his ample sleeve; and with his right hand stretched out he read other
more complicated lines on his arm, at the same time moving his fingers
daintily about like one playing on a lyre. At last he struck seven blows
with his thumb, and an entire section of the wall turned about in a
single block.
It served to conceal a sort of cellar containing mysterious things which
had no name and were of incalculable value. Hamilcar went down the three
steps, took up a llama’s skin which was floating on a black liquid in
a silver vat, and then re-ascended.
Abdalonim again began to walk before him. He struck the pavement with
his tall cane, the pommel of which was adorned with bells, and before
every apartment cried aloud the name of Hamilcar amid eulogies and
benedictions.
Along the walls of the circular gallery, from which the passages
branched off, were piled little beams of algummim, bags of Lawsonia,
cakes of Lemnos-earth, and tortoise carapaces filled with pearls. The
Suffet brushed them with his robe as he passed without even looking at
some gigantic pieces of amber, an almost divine material formed by the
rays 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, pouring
oil into jars, and opening and shutting the little ovoid cells which
were hollowed out all round in the wall, and were so numerous that
the apartment was like the interior of a hive. They were brimful of
myrobalan, bdellium, saffron, and violets. Gums, powders, roots, glass
phials, branches of filipendula, and rose-petals were scattered about
everywhere, and the scents were stifling in spite of the cloud-wreaths
from the styrax shrivelling on a brazen tripod in the centre.
The Chief of the Sweet Odours, pale and long as a waxen torch, came up
to Hamilcar to crush a roll of metopion in his hands, while two others
rubbed his heels with leaves of baccharis. He repelled them; they were
Cyreneans of infamous morals, but valued on account of the secrets which
they possessed.
To show his vigilance the Chief of the Odours offered the Suffet a
little malobathrum to taste in an electrum spoon; then he pierced three
Indian bezoars with an awl. The master, who knew the artifices employed,
took a horn full of balm, and after holding it near the coals inclined
it over his robe. A brown spot appeared; it was a fraud. Then he gazed
fixedly at the Chief of the Odours, and without saying anything flung
the gazelle’s horn full in his face.
However indignant he might be at adulterations made to his own
prejudice, when he perceived some parcels of nard which were being
packed up for countries beyond the sea, he ordered antimony to be mixed
with it so as to make it heavier.
Then he asked where three boxes of psagdas designed for his own use were
to be found.
The Chief of the Odours confessed that he did not know; some soldiers
had 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; and
his eyeballs flashed like torches through the smoke upon the tall, pale
man who was beginning to understand. “Abdalonim! you will make him run
the gauntlet before sunset: tear him!”
This loss, which was less than the others, had exasperated him; for in
spite of his efforts to banish them from his thoughts he was continually
coming again across the Barbarians. Their excesses were blended with
his daughter’s shame, and he was angry with the whole household for
knowing of the latter and for not speaking of it to him. But something
impelled him to bury himself in his misfortune; and in an inquisitorial
fit he visited the sheds behind the mercantile house to see the
supplies of bitumen, wood, anchors and cordage, honey and wax, the cloth
warehouse, 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 their
cottages, of the domestic artisans whose productions were sold. There
were tailors embroidering cloaks, others making nets, others painting
cushions or cutting out sandals, and Egyptian workmen polished papyrus
with 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 the
antelope’s skin that had been steeped in poisons from his bosom to
have it cut into a cuirass more solid than one of brass and unassailable
by steel or flame.
As soon as he approached the workmen, Abdalonim, to give his wrath
another direction, tried to anger him against them by murmured
disparagement of their work. “What a performance! It is a shame! The
Master is indeed too good.” Hamilcar moved away without listening to
him.
He slackened his pace, for the paths were barred by great trees calcined
from one end to the other, such as may be met with in woods where
shepherds have encamped; and the palings were broken, the water in the
trenches was disappearing, while fragments of glass and the bones of
apes were to be seen amid the miry puddles. A scrap of cloth hung
here and there from the bushes, and the rotten flowers formed a yellow
muck-heap beneath the citron trees. In fact, the servants had neglected
everything, thinking that the master would never return.
At every step he discovered some new disaster, some further proof of the
thing which he had forbidden himself to learn. Here he was soiling his
purple boots as he crushed the filth under-foot; and he had not all
these men before him at the end of a catapult to make them fly into
fragments! He felt humiliated at having defended them; it was a delusion
and a piece of treachery; and as he could not revenge himself upon
the soldiers, or the Ancients, or Salammbô, or anybody, and his wrath
required some victim, he condemned all the slaves of the gardens to the
mines at a single stroke.
Abdalonim shuddered each time that he saw him approaching the parks. But
Hamilcar took the path towards the mill, from which there might be heard
issuing a mournful melopoia.
The heavy mill-stones were turning amid the dust. They consisted of two
cones of porphyry laid the one upon the other—the upper one of the
two, which carried a funnel, being made to revolve upon the second by
means of strong bars. Some men were pushing these with their breasts
and arms, while others were yoked to them and were pulling them. The
friction of the straps had formed purulent scabs round about their
armpits such as are seen on asses’ withers, and the end of the limp
black rag, which scarcely covered their loins, hung down and flapped
against their hams like a long tail. Their eyes were red, the irons on
their feet clanked, and all their breasts panted rhythmically. On their
mouths they had muzzles fastened by two little bronze chains to render
it impossible for them to eat the flour, and their hands were enclosed
in 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 personage
appeared, his rank being displayed in the richness of his dress. His
tunic, which was slit up the sides, was of fine purple; his ears were
weighted with heavy rings; and the strips of cloth enfolding his legs
were joined together with a lacing of gold which extended from his
ankles 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 to
recognise the men who were subject to the sacred disease.
Hamilcar signed to him to unfasten the muzzles. Then with the cries of
famished animals they all rushed upon the flour, burying their faces in
the heaps of it and devouring it.
“You are weakening them!” said the Suffet.
Giddenem replied that such treatment was necessary in order to subdue
them.
“It was scarcely worth while sending you to the slaves’ school at
Syracuse. Fetch the others!”
And the cooks, butlers, grooms, runners, and litter-carriers, the men
belonging to the vapour-baths, and the women with their children, all
ranged themselves in a single line in the garden from the mercantile
house to the deer park. They held their breath. An immense silence
prevailed in Megara. The sun was lengthening across the lagoon at the
foot of the catacombs. The peacocks were screeching. Hamilcar walked
along 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: they
are liars! Buy me some Cappadocians, Asiatics, and Negroes.”
He was astonished that the children were so few. “The house ought to
have births every year, Giddenem. You will leave the huts open every
night to let them mingle freely.”
He then had the thieves, the lazy, and the mutinous shown to him. He
distributed punishments, with reproaches to Giddenem; and Giddenem,
ox-like, bent his low forehead, with its two broad intersecting
eyebrows.
“See, Eye of Baal,” he said, pointing out a sturdy Libyan, “here
is 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 said
to the serving-men:
“Away with him!”
Perhaps in his thoughts he intended a sacrifice. It was a misfortune
which he inflicted upon himself in order to avert more terrible ones.
Giddenem had hidden those who were mutilated behind the others. Hamilcar
perceived 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 jet
necklace out of Giddenem’s hands.
“Cursed be the dog that injures the flock! Gracious Tanith, to cripple
slaves! Ah! you ruin your master! Let him be smothered in the dunghill.
And those that are missing? Where are they? Have you helped the soldiers
to murder them?”
His face was so terrible that all the women fled. The slaves drew back
and formed a large circle around them; Giddenem was frantically kissing
his 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 had
turned aside; and in the gleaming of his wrath he could once more see
all his disasters simultaneously as in the lightnings of a storm.
The governors of the country estates had fled through terror of the
soldiers, perhaps through collusion with them; they were all deceiving
him; he had restrained himself too long.
“Bring them here!” he cried; “and brand them on the forehead with
red-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 for
fastening the legs, numellæ for confining the shoulders, and scorpions
or 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 upright
against the trees with two men beside them, one counting the blows and
the other striking.
In striking he used both his arms, and the whistling thongs made the
bark of the plane-trees fly. The blood was scattered like rain upon the
foliage, 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 of
the kitchens, men were brisking up burning coals with fans amid
tattered garments and scattered hair, and a smell of burning flesh was
perceptible. Those who were under the scourge, swooning, but kept in
their positions by the bonds on their arms, rolled their heads upon
their shoulders and closed their eyes. The others who were watching
them began to shriek with terror, and the lions, remembering the feast
perhaps, stretched themselves out yawning against the edge of the dens.
Then Salammbô was seen on the platform of her terrace. She ran wildly
about it from left to right. Hamilcar perceived her. It seemed to him
that she was holding up her arms towards him to ask for pardon; with a
gesture of horror he plunged into the elephants’ park.
These animals were the pride of the great Punic houses. They had carried
their ancestors, had triumphed in the wars, and they were reverenced as
being the favourites of the Sun.
Those of Megara were the strongest in Carthage. Before he went away
Hamilcar had required Abdalonim to swear that he would watch over them.
But they had died from their mutilations; and only three remained, lying
in 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 was
cut off.
They looked sadly at him, like reasonable creatures; and the one that
had lost its trunk tried by stooping its huge head and bending its hams
to stroke him softly with the hideous extremity of its stump.
At this caress from the animal two tears started into his eyes. He
rushed 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 blue
smoke of which was ascending slowly into the sky; Hamilcar paused.
The thought of his son had suddenly calmed him like the touch of a
god. He caught a glimpse of a prolongation of his might, an indefinite
continuation of his personality, and the slaves could not understand
whence this appeasement had come upon him.
As he bent his steps towards the purple factories he passed before the
ergastulum, which was a long house of black stone built in a square pit
with 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 the
prison. Some cried out to him: “Return”; the boldest followed him.
The open door was flapping in the wind. The twilight entered through
the narrow loopholes, and in the interior broken chains could be
distinguished hanging from the walls.
This was all that remained of the captives of war!
Then Hamilcar grew extraordinarily pale, and those who were leaning
over the pit outside saw him resting one hand against the wall to keep
himself from falling.
But the jackal uttered its cry three times in succession. Hamilcar
raised his head; he did not speak a word nor make a gesture. Then when
the sun had completely set he disappeared behind the nopal hedge, and in
the evening he said as he entered the assembly of the rich in the temple
of Eschmoun:
“Luminaries of the Baalim, I accept the command of the Punic forces
against the army of the Barbarians!”