Narr’ Havas had ceased speaking; Salammbo was looking at him without replying.  He wore a linen robe with flowers painted on it, and with gold fringes at the hem; two silver arrows fastened his plaited hair at the tips of his ears; his right hand rested on a pike-staff adorned with circles of electrum and tufts of hair.

As she watched him a crowd of dim thoughts absorbed her.  This young man, with his gentle voice and feminine figure, captivated her eyes by the grace of his person, and seemed to her like an elder sister sent by the Baals to protect her.  The recollection of Matho came upon her, nor did she resist the desire to learn what had become of him.

Narr’ Havas replied that the Carthaginians were advancing towards Tunis to take it.  In proportion as he set forth their chances of success and Matho’s weaknesses, she seemed to rejoice in extraordinary hope.  Her lips trembled, her breast panted.  When he finally promised to kill him himself, she exclaimed:  “Yes! kill him!  It must be so!”

The Numidian replied that he desired this death ardently, since he would be her husband when the war was over.

Salammbo started, and bent her head.

But Narr’ Havas, pursuing the subject, compared his longings to flowers languishing for rain, or to lost travellers waiting for the day.  He told her, further, that she was more beautiful than the moon, better than the wind of morning or than the face of a guest.  He would bring for her from the country of the Blacks things such as there were none in Carthage, and the apartments in their house should be sanded with gold dust.

Evening fell, and odours of balsam were exhaled.  For a long time they looked at each other in silence, and Salammbo’s eyes, in the depths of her long draperies, resembled two stars in the rift of a cloud.  Before the sun set he withdrew.

The Ancients felt themselves relieved of a great anxiety, when he left Carthage.  The people had received him with even more enthusiastic acclamations than on the first occasion.  If Hamilcar and the King of the Numidians triumphed alone over the Mercenaries it would be impossible to resist them.  To weaken Barca they therefore resolved to make the aged Hanno, him whom they loved, a sharer in the deliverance of Carthage.

He proceeded immediately towards the western provinces, to take his vengeance in the very places which had witnessed his shame.  But the inhabitants and the Barbarians were dead, hidden, or fled.  Then his anger was vented upon the country.  He burnt the ruins of the ruins, he did not leave a single tree nor a blade of grass; the children and the infirm, that were met with, were tortured; he gave the women to his soldiers to be violated before they were slaughtered.

Often, on the crests of the hills, black tents were struck as though overturned by the wind, and broad, brilliantly bordered discs, which were recognised as being chariot-wheels, revolved with a plaintive sound as they gradually disappeared in the valleys.  The tribes, which had abandoned the siege of Carthage, were wandering in this way through the provinces, waiting for an opportunity, or for some victory to be gained by the Mercenaries, in order to return.  But, whether from terror or famine, they all took the roads to their native lands, and disappeared.