r the second
time they recoiled before him. They remained standing for some time.
Several who had wounded their fingers put them to their mouths or rolled
them gently in the hem of their mantles, and they were about to depart
when Hamilcar heard these words:

"Why! it is a piece of delicacy to avoid distressing his daughter!"

A louder voice was raised:

"No doubt, since she takes her lovers from among the Mercenaries!"

At first he tottered, then his eye rapidly sought for Schahabarim. But
the priest of Tanith had alone remained in his place; and Hamilcar could
see only his lofty cap in the distance. All were sneering in his face.
In proportion as his anguish increased their joy redoubled, and those
who were behind shouted amid the hootings:

"He was seen coming out of her room!"

"One morning in the month of Tammouz!"

"It was the thief who stole the zaimph!"

"A very handsome man!"

"Taller than you!"

He snatched off the tiara, the ensign of his rank--his tiara with its
eight mystic rows, and with an emerald shell in the centre--and with
both hands and with all his strength dashed it to the ground; the golden
circles rebounded as they broke, and the pearls rang upon the pavement.
Then they saw a long scar upon the whiteness of his brow; it moved like
a serpent between his eyebrows; all his limbs trembled. He ascended one
of the lateral staircases which led on to the altar, and walked upon
the latter! This was to devote himself to the god, to offer himself as
a holocaust. The motion of his mantle agitated the lights of the
candelabrum, which was lower than his sandals, and the fine dust raised
by his footsteps surrounded him like a cloud as high as the waist. He
stopped between the legs of the brass colossus. He took up two handfuls
of the dust, the mere sight of which made every Carthaginian shudder
with horror, and said:

"By the hundred torches of your Intelligences! by the eight fires of the
Kabiri! by the stars, the meteors, and the volcanoes! by everything that
burns! by the thirst of the desert and the saltness of the ocean! by
the cave of Hadrumetum and the empire of Souls! by extermination! by the
ashes of your sons and the ashes of the brothers of your ancestors with
which I now mingle my own!--you, the Hundred of the Council of Carthage,
have lied in your accusation of my daughter! And I, Hamilcar Barca,
marine Suffet, chief of the rich and ruler of the people, in the
presence of bull-headed