appeared a line of walls resting on white rocks and blending with

them. Suddenly the entire city rose; blue, yellow, and white veils
moved on the walls in the redness of the evening. These were the

priestesses of Tanith, who had hastened hither to receive the men.
They stood ranged along the rampart, striking tabourines, playing

lyres, and shaking crotala, while the rays of the sun, setting behind
them in the mountains of Numidia, shot between the strings of their

lyres over which their naked arms were stretched. At intervals their
instruments would become suddenly still, and a cry would break forth

strident, precipitate, frenzied, continuous, a sort of barking which
they made by striking both corners of the mouth with the tongue.

Others, more motionless than the Sphynx, rested on their elbows with
their chins on their hands, and darted their great black eyes upon the

army as it ascended.
Although Sicca was a sacred town it could not hold such a multitude;

the temple alone, with its appurtenances, occupied half of it.
Accordingly the Barbarians established themselves at their ease on the

plain; those who were disciplined in regular troops, and the rest
according to nationality or their own fancy.

The Greeks ranged their tents of skin in parallel lines; the Iberians
placed their canvas pavilions in a circle; the Gauls made themselves

huts of planks; the Libyans cabins of dry stones, while the Negroes
with their nails hollowed out trenches in the sand to sleep in. Many,

not knowing where to go, wandered about among the baggage, and at
nightfall lay down in their ragged mantles on the ground.

The plain, which was wholly bounded by mountains, expanded around
them. Here and there a palm tree leaned over a sand hill, and pines

and oaks flecked the sides of the precipices: sometimes the rain of a
storm would hang from the sky like a long scarf, while the country

everywhere was still covered with azure and serenity; then a warm wind
would drive before it tornadoes of dust, and a stream would descend in

cascades from the heights of Sicca, where, with its roofing of gold on
its columns of brass, rose the temple of the Carthaginian Venus, the

mistress of the land. She seemed to fill it with her soul. In such
convulsions of the soil, such alternations of temperature, and such

plays of light would she manifest the extravagance of her might with
the beauty of her eternal smile. The mountains at their summits were

crescent-shaped; others were like women's bosoms presenting their
swelling breasts, and the Barbarians felt a heaviness that was full of

delight weighing down their fatigues.
Spendius had bought a slave with the money brought him by his

dromedary. The whole day long he lay asleep stretched before Matho's
tent. Often he would awake, thinking in his dreams that he heard the

whistling of the thongs; with a smile he would pass his hands over the
scars on his legs at the place where the fetters had long been worn,

and then he would fall asleep again.
Matho accepted his companionship, and when he went out Spendius would

escort him like a lictor with a long sword on his thigh; or perhaps
Matho would rest his arm carelessly on the other's shoulder, for

Spendius was small.
One evening when they were passing together through the streets in the

camp they perceived some men covered with white cloaks; among them was
Narr' Havas, the prince of the Numidians. Matho started.

"Your sword!" he cried; "I will kill him!"
"Not yet!" said Spendius, restraining him. Narr' Havas was already

advancing towards him.
He kissed both thumbs in token of alliance, showing nothing of the

anger which he had experienced at the drunkenness of the feast; then
he spoke at length against Carthage, but did not say what brought him

among the Barbarians.
"Was it to betray them, or else the Republic?" Spendius asked himself;

and as he expected to profit by every disorder, he felt grateful to
Narr' Havas for the future perfidies of which he suspected him.

The chief of the Numidians remained amongst the Mercenaries. He
appeared desirous of attaching Matho to himself. He sent him fat

goats, gold dust, and ostrich feathers. The Libyan, who was amazed at
such caresses, was in doubt whether to respond to them or to become

exasperated at them. But Spendius pacified him, and Matho allowed
himself to be ruled by the slave, remaining ever irresolute and in an

unconquerable torpor, like those who have once taken a draught of
which they are to die.

One morning when all three went out lion-hunting, Narr' Havas
concealed a dagger in his cloak. Spendius kept continually behind him,

and when they returned the dagger had not been drawn.
Another time Narr' Havas took them a long way off, as far as the

boundaries of his kingdom. They came to a narrow gorge, and Narr'
Havas smiled as he declared that he had forgotten the way. Spendius

found it again.
But most frequently Matho would go off at sunrise, as melancholy as an

augur, to wander about the country. He would stretch himself on the
sand, and remain there motionless until the evening.

He consulted all the soothsayers in the army one after the other,--
those who watch the trail of serpents, those who read the stars, and

those who breathe upon the ashes of the dead. He swallowed galbanum,
seseli, and viper's venom which freezes the heart; Negro women,

singing barbarous words in the moonlight, pricked the skin of his
forehead with golden stylets; he loaded himself with necklaces and

charms; he invoked in turn Baal-Khamon, Moloch, the seven Kabiri,
Tanith, and the Venus of the Greeks. He engraved a name upon a copper

plate, and buried it in the sand at the threshold of his tent.
Spendius used to hear him groaning and talking to himself.

One night he went in.
Matho, as naked as a corpse, was lying on a lion's skin flat on his

stomach, with his face in both his hands; a hanging lamp lit up his
armour, which was hooked on to the tent-pole above his head.

"You are suffering?" said the slave to him. "What is the matter with
you? Answer me?" And he shook him by the shoulder calling him several

times, "Master! master!"
At last Matho lifted large troubled eyes towards him.

"Listen!" he said in a low voice, and with a finger on his lips. "It
is the wrath of the Gods! Hamilcar's daughter pursues me! I am afraid

of her, Spendius!" He pressed himself close against his breast like a
child terrified by a phantom. "Speak to me! I am sick! I want to get

well! I have tried everything! But you, you perhaps know some stronger
gods, or some resistless invocation?"

"For what purpose?" asked Spendius.
Striking his head with both his fists, he replied:

"To rid me of her!"
Then speaking to himself with long pauses he said:

"I am no doubt the victim of some holocaust which she has promised to
the gods?--She holds me fast by a chain which people cannot see. If I

walk, it is she that is advancing; when I stop, she is resting! Her
eyes burn me, I hear her voice. She encompasses me, she penetrates me.

It seems to me that she has become my soul!
"And yet between us there are, as it were, the invisible billows of a

boundless ocean! She is far away and quite inaccessible! The splendour
of her beauty forms a cloud of light around her, and at times I think

that I have never seen her--that she does not exist--and that it is
all a dream!"

Matho wept thus in the darkness; the Barbarians were sleeping.
Spendius, as he looked at him, recalled the young men who once used to

entreat him with golden cases in their hands, when he led his herd of
courtesans through the towns; a feeling of pity moved him, and he

said--
"Be strong, my master! Summon your will, and beseech the gods no more,

for they turn not aside at the cries of men! Weeping like a coward!
And you are not humiliated that a woman can cause you so much

suffering?"
"Am I a child?" said Matho. "Do you think that I am moved by their