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 Salammbo, 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 melopoeia.
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 slaved, 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