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.
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.
Hamilcar was not jealous of Hanno's successes.Nevertheless he was in a hurry to end matters; he commanded him to fall back upon Tunis; and Hanno, who loved his country, was under the walls of the town on the appointed day.
