swords,
glittered and blazed terribly in the light of the sun, open in the
sky, above the Libyan chain, like a great Osirian eye; and it was felt
that the onslaught of such an army must sweep away the nations like a
whirlwind which drives a light straw before it.

Beneath these innumerable wheels the earth resounded and trembled, as
if it had been moved by some convulsion of nature.

To the chariots succeeded the battalions of infantry, marching in
order, their shields on the left arm; in the right hand the lance,
curved club, bow, sling, or ax, according as they were armed; the
heads of these soldiers were covered with helmets, adorned with two
horsehair tails, their bodies girded with a cuirass belt of
crocodile-skin. Their impassible look, the perfect regularity of their
movements, their reddish copper complexions, deepened by a recent
expedition to the burning regions of Upper Ethiopia, their clothing
powdered with the desert sand, they awoke admiration by their
discipline and courage. With soldiers like those Egypt could conquer
the world. After them came the allied troops, recognizable from the
outlandish form of their headpieces, which looked like truncated
miters, or were surmounted by crescents spitted on sharp points. Their
wide-bladed swords and jagged axes must have produced wounds which
could not be healed.

Slaves carried on their shoulders or on barrows the spoils enumerated
by the herald, and wild-beast tamers dragged behind them leashed
panthers, cheetahs, crouching down as if trying to hide themselves,
ostriches fluttering their wings, giraffes which overtopped the crowd
by the entire length of their necks, and even brown bears--taken, they
said, in the Mountains of the Moon.

The procession was still passing, long after the King had entered his
palace.

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Born in 1821, died in 1880; traveled in the East; published
in 1857 his best-known work, "Madame Bovary," which led to
litigation as to the morality of the story: ultimately
acquitted; published "Salammbo" in 1858; author of other
novels and plays.

YONGEVILLE AND ITS PEOPLE[4]

Yonville-l'Abbaye--so called from an old Capuchin abbey of which not
even the ruins remain--is a market-town twenty-four miles from Rouen,
between the Abbeville and Beauvais roads, at the foot of a valley
watered by the Rieule, a little river that runs into the Andelle after
turning three water-mills near its