At last they stopped.  Their breasts made a great hoarse noise, and their eyeballs could be seen through their long hair, which hung down as though it had come out of a purple bath.  Several were turning round rapidly, like panthers wounded in the forehead.  Others stood motionless looking at a corpse at their feet; then they would suddenly tear their faces with their nails, take their swords with both hands, and plunge them into their own bodies.

There were still sixty left.  They asked for drink.  They were told by shouts to throw away their swords, and when they had done so water was brought to them.

While they were drinking, with their faces buried in the vases, sixty Carthaginians leaped upon them and killed them with stiletos in the back.

Hamilcar had done this to gratify the instincts of his army, and, by means of this treachery, to attach it to his own person.

The war, then, was ended; at least he believed that it was; Matho would not resist; in his impatience the Suffet commanded an immediate departure.

His scouts came to tell him that a convoy had been descried, departing towards the Lead Mountain.  Hamilcar did not trouble himself about it.  The Mercenaries once annihilated, the Nomads would give him no further trouble.  The important matter was to take Tunis.  He advanced by forced marches upon it.

He had sent Narr’ Havas to Carthage with the news of his victory; and the King of the Numidians, proud of his success, visited Salammbo.

She received him in her gardens under a large sycamore tree, amid pillows of yellow leather, and with Taanach beside her.  Her face was covered with a white scarf, which, passing over her mouth and forehead, allowed only her eyes to be seen; but her lips shone in the transparency of the tissue like the gems on her fingers, for Salammbo had both her hands wrapped up, and did not make a gesture during the whole conversation.

Narr’ Havas announced the defeat of the Barbarians to her.  She thanked him with a blessing for the services which he had rendered to her father.  Then he began to tell her about the whole campaign.

The doves on the palm trees around them cooed softly, and other birds fluttered amid the grass:  ring-necked glareolas, Tartessus quails and Punic guinea-fowl.  The garden, long uncultivated, had multiplied its verdure; coloquintidas mounted into the branches of cassias, the asclepias was scattered over fields of roses, all kinds of vegetation formed entwinings and bowers; and here and there, as in the woods, sun-rays, descending obliquely, marked the shadow of a leaf upon the ground.  Domestic animals, grown wild again, fled at the slightest noise.  Sometimes a gazelle might be seen trailing scattered peacocks’ feathers after its little black hoofs.  The clamours of the distant town were lost in the murmuring of the waves.  The sky was quite blue, and not a sail was visible on the sea.