The Project Gutenberg EBook of Salammbo, by Gustave Flaubert

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Title: Salammbo

Author: Gustave Flaubert

Release Date: February 11, 2006 [EBook #1290]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by John Bickers and David Widger

SALAMMBO

By Gustave Flaubert

CHAPTER I

THE FEAST

It was at Megara, a suburb of Carthage, in the gardens of Hamilcar. The
soldiers whom he had commanded in Sicily were having a great feast to
celebrate the anniversary of the battle of Eryx, and as the master was
away, and they were numerous, they ate and drank with perfect freedom.

The captains, who wore bronze cothurni, had placed themselves in the
central path, beneath a gold-fringed purple awning, which reached from
the wall of the stables to the first terrace of the palace; the common
soldiers were scattered beneath the trees, where numerous flat-roofed
buildings might be seen, wine-presses, cellars, storehouses, bakeries,
and arsenals, with a court for elephants, dens for wild beasts, and a
prison for slaves.

Fig-trees surrounded the kitchens; a wood of sycamores stretched away to
meet masses of verdure, where the pomegranate shone amid the white tufts
of the cotton-plant; vines, grape-laden, grew up into the branches of
the pines; a field of roses bloomed beneath the plane-trees; here and
there lilies rocked upon the turf; the paths were strewn with black sand
mingled with powdered coral, and in the centre the avenue of cypress
formed, as it were, a double colonnade of green obelisks from one
extremity to the other.

Far in the background stood the palace, built of yellow mottled Numidian
marble, broad courses supporting its four terraced stories. With its
large, straight, ebony staircase, bearing the prow of a vanquished
galley at the corners of every step, its red doors quartered with black
crosses, its brass gratings protecting it from scorpions below, and its
trellises of gilded rods closing the apertures above, it seemed to the
soldiers in its haughty opulence as solemn and impenetrable as the face
of Hamilcar.

The Council had appointed his house for the holding of this