loved your people," continued the Amazon. "If my father
Iarbas submitted to the domination of Carthage, it was because at the
head of it was Hamilcar, an African, a Numidian like ourselves. I hate
the Carthaginian merchants as bitterly as you do--those ancient
Phoenicians from the rock-bound Aradus who prospered and reproduced
like worms, afterwards to cross the sea and take possession of our
beautiful soil of Africa. I hate the ship figured upon so many of your
coins and temples, because it is the sign of the avaricious people who
came to exploit us, but I adore the Carthaginian charger, the Numidian
horse, the symbol of our past."

Then she spoke of the charm which the glory of the Barcas had exercised
over her mind from afar. She had loved Hannibal without realizing it,
influenced by tales of his achievements which had reached her ears. She
imagined him fighting like a young lion at his father's side, among
herds of bulls with flaming horns, and among burning chariots which the
Iberians drove against the Carthaginian invader; she thought of him, mad
with fury, before the body of Hamilcar, and then languishing from
inaction beside the beautiful Hasdrubal, conciliatory and pacific, until
the moment when, his brother being assassinated by the dagger of a Gaul,
the whole army acclaimed the youth as chieftain.

Her father Iarbas had just died, and she, now become queen of her
tribes, heard that Hannibal, thirsting for glory and for combat, was
isolated in the fortress of New Carthage, with no other troops than the
remnant of the army which Hamilcar had taken to Iberia. The rich of
Carthage, enemies of the Barcas, fearing the populace, dared not
deprive Hamilcar's son of the chieftancy which his soldiers tendered
him; they confirmed it by their silence, but they kept him isolated,
without resources, left to his own devices, so that the natives should
put an end to him, or at the most, that he might conquer a small
territory on the Iberian coast in which the ambition of the Barcas would
gradually become extinguished.

"Then I flew to your side," continued Asbyte. "I wished to know the man
and to save the hero. I turned over a great part of my riches to the
merchants of Carthage for the loan of their ships; I kindled the
enthusiasm of the most warlike of my tribes to follow me; even their
daughters imitated me, and went lion hunting, galloping all day long,
lance in hand, drawn on by my mad adventure, and one afternoon, wh