“You will lose your ships, your country seats, your chariots, your hanging beds, and the slaves who rub your feet!  The jackal will crouch in your palaces, and the ploughshare will upturn your tombs.  Nothing will be left but the eagles’ scream and a heap of ruins.  Carthage, thou wilt fall!”

The four pontiffs spread out their hands to avert the anathema.  All had risen.  But the marine Suffet, being a sacerdotal magistrate under the protection of the Sun, was inviolate so long as the assembly of the rich had not judged him.  Terror was associated with the altar.  They drew back.

Hamilcar had ceased speaking, and was panting with eye fixed, his face as pale as the pearls of his tiara, almost frightened at himself, and his spirit lost in funereal visions.  From the height on which he stood, all the torches on the bronze shafts seemed to him like a vast crown of fire laid level with the pavement; black smoke issuing from them mounted up into the darkness of the vault; and for some minutes the silence was so profound that they could hear in the distance the sound of the sea.

Then the Ancients began to question one another.  Their interests, their existence, were attacked by the Barbarians.  But it was impossible to conquer them without the assistance of the Suffet, and in spite of their pride this consideration made them forget every other.  His friends were taken aside.  There were interested reconciliations, understandings, and promises.  Hamilcar would not take any further part in any government.  All conjured him.  They besought him; and as the word treason occurred in their speech, he fell into a passion.  The sole traitor was the Great Council, for as the enlistment of the soldiers expired with the war, they became free as soon as the war was finished; he even exalted their bravery and all the advantages which might be derived from interesting them in the Republic by donations and privileges.

Then Magdassin, a former provincial governor, said, as he rolled his yellow eyes: 

“Truly Barca, with your travelling you have become a Greek, or a Latin, or something!  Why speak you of rewards for these men?  Rather let ten thousand Barbarians perish than a single one of us!”

The Ancients nodded approval, murmuring:—­“Yes, is there need for so much trouble?  They can always be had?”

“And they can be got rid of conveniently, can they not?  They are deserted as they were by you in Sardinia.  The enemy is apprised of the road which they are to take, as in the case of those Gauls in Sicily, or perhaps they are disembarked in the middle of the sea.  As I was returning I saw the rock quite white with their bones!”

“What a misfortune!” said Kapouras impudently.

“Have they not gone over to the enemy a hundred times?” cried the others.