distance a few ships'-lanterns
were gliding across the harbour, and there were lights in the temple of
Khamon. They thought of Hamilcar. Where was he? Why had he forsaken
them when peace was concluded? His differences with the Council were
doubtless but a pretence in order to destroy them. Their unsatisfied
hate recoiled upon him, and they cursed him, exasperating one another
with their own anger. At this juncture they collected together beneath
the plane-trees to see a slave who, with eyeballs fixed, neck contorted,
and lips covered with foam, was rolling on the ground, and beating the
soil with his limbs. Some one cried out that he was poisoned. All then
believed themselves poisoned. They fell upon the slaves, a terrible
clamour was raised, and a vertigo of destruction came like a whirlwind
upon the drunken army. They struck about them at random, they smashed,
they slew; some hurled torches into the foliage; others, leaning over
the lions' balustrade, massacred the animals with arrows; the most
daring ran to the elephants, desiring to cut down their trunks and eat
ivory.

Some Balearic slingers, however, who had gone round the corner of the
palace, in order to pillage more conveniently, were checked by a lofty
barrier, made of Indian cane. They cut the lock-straps with their
daggers, and then found themselves beneath the front that faced
Carthage, in another garden full of trimmed vegetation. Lines of white
flowers all following one another in regular succession formed long
parabolas like star-rockets on the azure-coloured earth. The gloomy
bushes exhaled warm and honied odours. There were trunks of trees
smeared with cinnabar, which resembled columns covered with blood. In
the centre were twelve pedestals, each supporting a great glass ball,
and these hollow globes were indistinctly filled with reddish lights,
like enormous and still palpitating eyeballs. The soldiers lighted
themselves with torches as they stumbled on the slope of the deeply
laboured soil.

But they perceived a little lake divided into several basins by walls
of blue stones. So limpid was the wave that the flames of the torches
quivered in it at the very bottom, on a bed of white pebbles and golden
dust. It began to bubble, luminous spangles glided past, and great fish
with gems about their mouths, appeared near the surface.

With much laughter the soldiers slipped their fingers into the gills and
brought them to the tables. They were the fish of