What of Sonnica? Where could he find Sonnica? His last thought was to
reach her body, which must be near. He wished to kiss her as her slave;
to render her that tribute before he died. But as he made a supreme
exertion, raising his head from the ground, a wave of warm and sticky
liquid covered his face. It was his last blood.

Then he seemed to see, with the vagueness of a vanishing dream, a kind
of black centaur, galloping over the slain, and looking at the blazing
city, laughing with malevolent joy.

He passed near. His horse's hoofs ploughed into the body of the
Celtiberian lying on his breast. The dying Greek recognized the horseman
by the light of the conflagration.

It was Hannibal, his head uncovered, possessed by the fury of triumph,
galloping on his jet-black horse which seemed to have caught the
ferocity of the rider, whinnying, treading on the fallen bodies, lashing
his tail above the litter of battle. To the Greek he appeared an
infernal demon coming for his soul.

Dimly, like a blurred vision, he saw the face of Hannibal animated by a
smile of pride, of cruel satisfaction--the majestic and ferocious visage
of one of those gods of Carthage who showed clemency only when human
sacrifices were smoking upon their altars.

Hannibal laughed on seeing that at last the city which had detained him
eight months before her walls, was his. Now he was free to go on working
out his audacious dreams!

The Greek saw no more. He sank finally into eternal night.

Hannibal galloped on around the city, and beholding the purplish glow of
the coming day breaking over the sea, he reined in his horse, he looked
into the East, and extending his arm, impatient to stretch it across the
blue expanse bounded by the horizon, he shouted threateningly, as if
challenging an invisible enemy before falling upon it:

"Rome!----Rome!"

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sonnica, by Vicente Blasco Ibanez

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SONNICA ***

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