; among them was
Narr' Havas, the prince of the Numidians. Matho started.

"Your sword!" he cried; "I will kill him!"

"Not yet!" said Spendius, restraining him. Narr' Havas was already
advancing towards him.

He kissed both thumbs in token of alliance, showing nothing of the anger
which he had experienced at the drunkenness of the feast; then he spoke
at length against Carthage, but did not say what brought him among the
Barbarians.

"Was it to betray them, or else the Republic?" Spendius asked himself;
and as he expected to profit by every disorder, he felt grateful to
Narr' Havas for the future perfidies of which he suspected him.

The chief of the Numidians remained amongst the Mercenaries. He appeared
desirous of attaching Matho to himself. He sent him fat goats, gold
dust, and ostrich feathers. The Libyan, who was amazed at such caresses,
was in doubt whether to respond to them or to become exasperated at
them. But Spendius pacified him, and Matho allowed himself to be ruled
by the slave, remaining ever irresolute and in an unconquerable torpor,
like those who have once taken a draught of which they are to die.

One morning when all three went out lion-hunting, Narr' Havas concealed
a dagger in his cloak. Spendius kept continually behind him, and when
they returned the dagger had not been drawn.

Another time Narr' Havas took them a long way off, as far as the
boundaries of his kingdom. They came to a narrow gorge, and Narr' Havas
smiled as he declared that he had forgotten the way. Spendius found it
again.

But most frequently Matho would go off at sunrise, as melancholy as
an augur, to wander about the country. He would stretch himself on the
sand, and remain there motionless until the evening.

He consulted all the soothsayers in the army one after the other,--those
who watch the trail of serpents, those who read the stars, and those who
breathe upon the ashes of the dead. He swallowed galbanum, seseli, and
viper's venom which freezes the heart; Negro women, singing barbarous
words in the moonlight, pricked the skin of his forehead with golden
stylets; he loaded himself with necklaces and charms; he invoked in
turn Baal-Khamon, Moloch, the seven Kabiri, Tanith, and the Venus of
the Greeks. He engraved a name upon a copper plate, and buried it in the
sand at the threshold of his tent. Spendius used to hear him groaning
and talking to himself.

One night he went in.

Matho, as naked as a corpse, was