them.
A Balearic slinger took a step forward, put one of his clay bullets

into his thong, and swung round his arm. An ivory shield was shivered,
and the two armies mingled together.

The Greeks made the horses rear and fall back upon their masters by
pricking their nostrils with the points of their lances. The slaves

who were to hurl stones had picked such as were too big, and they
accordingly fell close to them. The Punic foot-soldiers exposed the

right side in cutting with their long swords. The Barbarians broke
their lines; they slaughtered them freely; they stumbled over the

dying and dead, quite blinded by the blood that spurted into their
faces. The confused heap of pikes, helmets, cuirasses and swords

turned round about, widening out and closing in with elastic
contractions. The gaps increased more and more in the Carthaginian

cohorts, the engines could not get out of the sand; and finally the
Suffet's litter (his grand litter with crystal pendants), which from

the beginning might have been seen tossing among the soldiers like a
bark on the waves, suddenly foundered. He was no doubt dead. The

Barbarians found themselves alone.
The dust around them fell and they were beginning to sing, when Hanno

himself appeared on the top of an elephant. He sat bare-headed beneath
a parasol of byssus which was carried by a Negro behind him. His

necklace of blue plates flapped against the flowers on his black
tunic; his huge arms were compressed within circles of diamonds, and

with open mouth he brandished a pike of inordinate size, which spread
out at the end like a lotus, and flashed more than a mirror.

Immediately the earth shook,--and the Barbarians saw all the elephants
of Carthage, with their gilt tusks and blue-painted ears, hastening up

in single line, clothed with bronze and shaking the leathern towers
which were placed above their scarlet caparisons, in each of which

were three archers bending large bows.
The soldiers were barely in possession of their arms; they had taken

up their positions at random. They were frozen with terror; they stood
undecided.

Javelins, arrows, phalaricas, and masses of lead were already being
showered down upon them from the towers. Some clung to the fringes of

the caparisons in order to climb up, but their hands were struck off
with cutlasses and they fell backwards upon the swords' points. The

pikes were too weak and broke, and the elephants passed through the
phalanxes like wild boars through tufts of grass; they plucked up the

stakes of the camp with their trunks, and traversed it from one end to
the other, overthrowing the tents with their breasts. All the

Barbarians had fled. They were hiding themselves in the hills
bordering the valley by which the Carthaginians had come.

The victorious Hanno presented himself before the gates of Utica. He
had a trumpet sounded. The three Judges of the town appeared in the

opening of the battlements on the summit of a tower.
But the people of Utica would not receive such well-armed guests.

Hanno was furious. At last they consented to admit him with a feeble
escort.

The streets were too narrow for the elephants. They had to be left
outside.

As soon as the Suffet was in the town the principal men came to greet
him. He had himself taken to the vapour baths, and called for his

cooks.
Three hours afterwards he was still immersed in the oil of cinnamomum

with which the basin had been filled; and while he bathed he ate
flamingoes' tongues with honied poppy-seeds on a spread ox-hide.

Beside him was his Greek physician, motionless, in a long yellow robe,
directing the re-heating of the bath from time to time, and two young

boys leaned over the steps of the basin and rubbed his legs. But
attention to his body did not check his love for the commonwealth, for

he was dictating a letter to be sent to the Great Council, and as some
prisoners had just been taken he was asking himself what terrible

punishment could be devised.
"Stop!" said he to a slave who stood writing in the hollow of his

hand. "Let some of them be brought to me! I wish to see them!"
And from the bottom of the hall, full of a whitish vapour on which the

torches cast red spots, three Barbarians were thrust forward: a
Samnite, a Spartan, and a Cappadocian.

"Proceed!" said Hanno.
"Rejoice, light of the Baals! your Suffet has exterminated the

ravenous hounds! Blessings on the Republic! Give orders for prayers!"
He perceived the captives and burst out laughing: "Ah! ha! my fine

fellows of Sicca! You are not shouting so loudly to-day! It is I! Do
you recognise me? And where are your swords? What really terrible

fellows!" and he pretended to be desirous to hide himself as if he
were afraid of them. "You demanded horses, women, estates,

magistracies, no doubt, and priesthoods! Why not? Well, I will provide
you with the estates, and such as you will never come out of! You

shall be married to gibbets that are perfectly new! Your pay? it shall
be melted in your mouths in leaden ingots! and I will put you into

good and very exalted positions among the clouds, so as to bring you
close to the eagles!"

The three long-haired and ragged Barbarians looked at him without
understanding what he said. Wounded in the knees, they had been seized

by having ropes thrown over them, and the ends of the great chains on
their hands trailed upon the pavement. Hanno was indignant at their

impassibility.
"On your knees! on your knees! jackals! dust! vermin! excrements! And

they make no reply! Enough! be silent! Let them be flayed alive! No!
presently!"

He was breathing like a hippopotamus and rolling his eyes. The
perfumed oil overflowed beneath the mass of his body, and clinging to

the scales on his skin, made it look pink in the light of the torches.
He resumed:

"For four days we suffered greatly from the sun. Some mules were lost
in crossing the Macaras. In spite of their position, the extraordinary

courage-- Ah! Demonades! how I suffer! Have the bricks reheated, and
let them be red-hot!"

A noise of rakes and furnaces was heard. The incense smoked more
strongly in the large perfuming pans, and the shampooers, who were

quite naked and were sweating like sponges, crushed a paste composed
of wheat, sulphur, black wine, bitch's milk, myrrh, galbanum and

storax upon his joints. He was consumed with incessantthirst, but the
yellow-robed man did not yield to this inclination, and held out to

him a golden cup in which viper broth was smoking.
"Drink!" said he, "that strength of sun-born serpents may penetrate

into the marrow of your bones, and take courage, O reflection of the
gods! You know, moreover, that a priest of Eschmoun watches those

cruel stars round the Dog from which your malady is derived. They are
growing pale like the spots on your skin, and you are not to die from

them."
"Oh! yes, that is so, is it not?" repeated the Suffet, "I am not to

die from them!" And his violaceous lips gave forth a breath more
nauseous than the exhalation from a corpse. Two coals seemed to burn

in the place of his eyes, which had lost their eyebrows; a mass of
wrinkled skin hung over his forehead; both his ears stood out from his

head and were beginning to increase in size; and the deep lines
forming semicircles round his nostrils gave him a strange and

terrifying appearance, the look of a wild beast. His unnatural voice
was like a roar; he said:

"Perhaps you are right, Demonades. In fact there are many ulcers here
which have closed. I feel robust. Here! look how I am eating!"