lver vat, and then re-ascended.

Abdalonim again began to walk before him. He struck the pavement with
his tall cane, the pommel of which was adorned with bells, and before
every apartment cried aloud the name of Hamilcar amid eulogies and
benedictions.

Along the walls of the circular gallery, from which the passages
branched off, were piled little beams of algummim, bags of Lawsonia,
cakes of Lemnos-earth, and tortoise carapaces filled with pearls. The
Suffet brushed them with his robe as he passed without even looking at
some gigantic pieces of amber, an almost divine material formed by the
rays of the sun.

A cloud of odorous vapour burst forth.

"Push open the door!"

They went in.

Naked men were kneading pastes, crushing herbs, stirring coals, pouring
oil into jars, and opening and shutting the little ovoid cells which
were hollowed out all round in the wall, and were so numerous that
the apartment was like the interior of a hive. They were brimful of
myrobalan, bdellium, saffron, and violets. Gums, powders, roots, glass
phials, branches of filipendula, and rose-petals were scattered about
everywhere, and the scents were stifling in spite of the cloud-wreaths
from the styrax shrivelling on a brazen tripod in the centre.

The Chief of the Sweet Odours, pale and long as a waxen torch, came up
to Hamilcar to crush a roll of metopion in his hands, while two others
rubbed his heels with leaves of baccharis. He repelled them; they were
Cyreneans of infamous morals, but valued on account of the secrets which
they possessed.

To show his vigilance the Chief of the Odours offered the Suffet a
little malobathrum to taste in an electrum spoon; then he pierced three
Indian bezoars with an awl. The master, who knew the artifices employed,
took a horn full of balm, and after holding it near the coals inclined
it over his robe. A brown spot appeared; it was a fraud. Then he gazed
fixedly at the Chief of the Odours, and without saying anything flung
the gazelle's horn full in his face.

However indignant he might be at adulterations made to his own
prejudice, when he perceived some parcels of nard which were being
packed up for countries beyond the sea, he ordered antimony to be mixed
with it so as to make it heavier.

Then he asked where three boxes of psagdas designed for his own use were
to be found.

The Chief of the Odours confessed that he did not know; some soldiers
had come howling in with knives and he ha