But a luminous bar rose towards the East; far below, on the left, the canals of Megara were beginning to stripe the verdure of the gardens with their windings of white.  The conical roofs of the heptagonal temples, the staircases, terraces, and ramparts were being carved by degrees upon the paleness of the dawn; and a girdle of white foam rocked around the Carthaginian peninsula, while the emerald sea appeared as if it were curdled in the freshness of the morning.  Then as the rosy sky grew larger, the lofty houses, bending over the sloping soil, reared and massed themselves like a herd of black goats coming down from the mountains.  The deserted streets lengthened; the palm-trees that topped the walls here and there were motionless; the brimming cisterns seemed like silver bucklers lost in the courts; the beacon on the promontory of Hermaeum was beginning to grow pale.  The horses of Eschmoun, on the very summit of the Acropolis in the cypress wood, feeling that the light was coming, placed their hoofs on the marble parapet, and neighed towards the sun.

It appeared, and Spendius raised his arms with a cry.

Everything stirred in a diffusion of red, for the god, as if he were rending himself, now poured full-rayed upon Carthage the golden rain of his veins.  The beaks of the galleys sparkled, the roof of Khamon appeared to be all in flames, while far within the temples, whose doors were opening, glimmerings of light could be seen.  Large chariots, arriving from the country, rolled their wheels over the flagstones in the streets.  Dromedaries, baggage-laden, came down the ramps.  Money-changers raised the pent-houses of their shops at the cross ways, storks took to flight, white sails fluttered.  In the wood of Tanith might be heard the tabourines of the sacred courtesans, and the furnaces for baking the clay coffins were beginning to smoke on the Mappalian point.

Spendius leaned over the terrace; his teeth chattered and he repeated: 

“Ah! yes—­yes—­master!  I understand why you scorned the pillage of the house just now.”

Matho was as if he had just been awaked by the hissing of his voice, and did not seem to understand.  Spendius resumed: 

“Ah! what riches! and the men who possess them have not even the steel to defend them!”

Then, pointing with his right arm outstretched to some of the populace who were crawling on the sand outside the mole to look for gold dust: 

“See!” he said to him, “the Republic is like these wretches:  bending on the brink of the ocean, she buries her greedy arms in every shore, and the noise of the billows so fills her ear that she cannot hear behind her the tread of a master’s heel!”

He drew Matho to quite the other end of the terrace, and showed him the garden, wherein the soldiers’ swords, hanging on the trees, were like mirrors in the sun.

“But here there are strong men whose hatred is roused! and nothing binds them to Carthage, neither families, oaths nor gods!”