laves sit round, in the
kitchen in the first court, at their coarse evening meal, the room is
filled with the invading force, and news comes to them that the enemy has
fallen upon the apples and pears in the basement, and is at the same time
plundering and sacking the preserves of quince and pomegranate, and
revelling in the jars of precious oil of Cyprus and Mendes in the
store-rooms.

They come up to the walls of Sicca, and are flung against them into the
ditch. Not a moment's hesitation or delay; they recover their footing,
they climb up the wood or stucco, they surmount the parapet, or they have
entered in at the windows, filling the apartments, and the most private
and luxurious chambers, not one or two, like stragglers at forage or
rioters after a victory, but in order of battle, and with the array of an
army. Choice plants or flowers about the _impluvia_ and _xysti_, for
ornament or refreshment, myrtles, oranges, pomegranates, the rose and the
carnation, have disappeared. They dim the bright marbles of the walls and
the gilding of the ceilings. They enter the triclinium in the midst of the
banquet; they crawl over the viands and spoil what they do not devour.
Unrelaxed by success and by enjoyment, onward they go; a secret mysterious
instinct keeps them together, as if they had a king over them. They move
along the floor in so strange an order that they seem to be a tesselated
pavement themselves, and to be the artificial embellishment of the place;
so true are their lines, and so perfect is the pattern they describe.
Onward they go, to the market, to the temple sacrifices, to the baker's
stores, to the cook-shops, to the confectioner's, to the druggists;
nothing comes amiss to them; wherever man has aught to eat or drink, there
are they, reckless of death, strong of appetite, certain of conquest.

They have passed on; the men of Sicca sadly congratulate themselves, and
begin to look about them, and to sum up their losses. Being the
proprietors of the neighbouring districts, or the purchasers of its
produce, they lament over the devastation, not because the fair country is
disfigured, but because income is becoming scanty, and prices are becoming
high. How is a population of many thousands to be fed? where is the grain,
where the melons, the figs, the dates, the gourds, the beans, the grapes,
to sustain and solace the multitudes in their lanes, caverns, and garrets?
This is another weighty consideration for the cl