“They again!” said Hamilcar, hanging his head; and he remained for a time as if quite crushed by the weight of all the hatreds that he could feel upon him.  “But I do not see the Megara expenses?”

Abdalonim, turning pale, went to another set of pigeon-holes, and took from them some planchettes of sycamore wood strung in packets on leathern strings.

Hamilcar, curious about these domestic details, listened to him and grew calm with the monotony of the tones in which the figures were enumerated.  Abdalonim became slower.  Suddenly he let the wooden sheets fall to the ground and threw himself flat on his face with his arms stretched out in the position of a condemned criminal.  Hamilcar picked up the tablets without any emotion; and his lips parted and his eyes grew larger when he perceived an exorbitant consumption of meat, fish, birds, wines, and aromatics, with broken vases, dead slaves, and spoiled carpets set down as the expense of a single day.

Abdalonim, still prostrate, told him of the feast of the Barbarians.  He had not been able to avoid the command of the Ancients.  Moreover, Salammbo desired money to be lavished for the better reception of the soldiers.

At his daughter’s name Hamilcar leaped to his feet.  Then with compressed lips he crouched down upon the cushions, tearing the fringes with his nails, and panting with staring eyes.

“Rise!” said he; and he descended.

Abdalonim followed him; his knees trembled.  But seizing an iron bar he began like one distraught to loosen the paving stones.  A wooden disc sprang up and soon there appeared throughout the length of the passage several of the large covers employed for stopping up the trenches in which grain was kept.

“You see, Eye of Baal,” said the servant, trembling, “they have not taken everything yet! and these are each fifty cubits deep and filled up to the brim!  During your voyage I had them dug out in the arsenals, in the gardens, everywhere! your house is full of corn as your heart is full of wisdom.”

A smile passed over Hamilcar’s face.  “It is well, Abdalonim!” Then bending over to his ear:  “You will have it brought from Etruria, Brutium, whence you will, and no matter at what price!  Heap it and keep it!  I alone must possess all the corn in Carthage.”

Then when they were alone at the extremity of the passage, Abdalonim, with one of the keys hanging at his girdle, opened a large quadrangular chamber divided in the centre by pillars of cedar.  Gold, silver, and brass coins were arranged on tables or packed into niches, and rose as high as the joists of the roof along the four walls.  In the corners there were huge baskets of hippopotamus skin supporting whole rows of smaller bags; there were hillocks formed of heaps of bullion on the pavement; and here and there a pile that was too high had given way and looked like a ruined column.  The large Carthaginian pieces, representing Tanith with a horse beneath a palm-tree,