rom Rome. They did not understand the words which had been exchanged;
but the energetic accent of the Roman as he spoke to Hannibal seemed to
them a threat. Some, pretending that they had understood the ambassador,
repeated an imaginary discourse in which the threat was made in the name
of Rome to cut the throats of the whole army and to stretch Hannibal on
a cross. They repeated these threats, each swelling them with inventions
of his own, and when the troops met other detachments on the Road of
the Serpent or in different parts of the valley, all declared they had
seen the chains which the Roman legates displayed from the ship, and in
which they expected to take their chieftain prisoner, and a howl of rage
arose from the hosts of Hannibal.

The African was flattered at the flood-tide of indignation surging
around him. The soldiers, barring his way, acclaimed him with greater
enthusiasm; he heard voices in every tongue crying death to Rome,
calling upon the chieftain to make the final assault upon the city, to
take possession of it before the ambassadors should reach Carthage and
plot the downfall of the youthful hero.

"Take care of yourself, Hannibal!" said an old Celtiberian planting
himself before his horse. "Your enemies in Carthage, Hanno's faction,
will unite with Rome to work your ruin."

"The people love me," said the chieftain, arrogantly. "Before the
Carthaginian Senate hears the Romans, Saguntum will be ours, and the
Carthaginians will acclaim our triumph."

With saddened heart Actaeon beheld the desolation of the fields which
used to be so joyous and so fertile. There were no other ships in the
port but men-of-war from New Carthage. The seamen slept in the fane of
Aphrodite after having rifled the temple of its valuables. The
warehouses had been pillaged and destroyed; the wharves covered with
filth; in the fields not a vestige of the ancient villas remained. The
ferocity of the barbarian tribes from the interior, their hatred for the
Greeks of the coast, had incited them to even tear up the multicolor
pavements and to scatter the fragments. The whole valley was an immense,
desolated plain. Not a tree was standing. To combat the cold of winter
they had felled the groves of fig trees, the broad plantations of
olives, the stocks of the grapevines of the vineyards, destroying even
the houses to warm themselves with the rafters from the roofs. Nothing
remained standing but ruined walls and low shrubbery. A