s little black hoofs. The clamours of the distant town were lost
in the murmuring of the waves. The sky was quite blue, and not a sail
was visible on the sea.

Narr' Havas had ceased speaking; Salammbo was looking at him without
replying. He wore a linen robe with flowers painted on it, and with gold
fringes at the hem; two silver arrows fastened his plaited hair at the
tips of his ears; his right hand rested on a pike-staff adorned with
circles of electrum and tufts of hair.

As she watched him a crowd of dim thoughts absorbed her. This young man,
with his gentle voice and feminine figure, captivated her eyes by the
grace of his person, and seemed to her like an elder sister sent by the
Baals to protect her. The recollection of Matho came upon her, nor did
she resist the desire to learn what had become of him.

Narr' Havas replied that the Carthaginians were advancing towards Tunis
to take it. In proportion as he set forth their chances of success and
Matho's weaknesses, she seemed to rejoice in extraordinary hope. Her
lips trembled, her breast panted. When he finally promised to kill him
himself, she exclaimed: "Yes! kill him! It must be so!"

The Numidian replied that he desired this death ardently, since he would
be her husband when the war was over.

Salammbo started, and bent her head.

But Narr' Havas, pursuing the subject, compared his longings to flowers
languishing for rain, or to lost travellers waiting for the day. He told
her, further, that she was more beautiful than the moon, better than the
wind of morning or than the face of a guest. He would bring for her from
the country of the Blacks things such as there were none in Carthage,
and the apartments in their house should be sanded with gold dust.

Evening fell, and odours of balsam were exhaled. For a long time they
looked at each other in silence, and Salammbo's eyes, in the depths of
her long draperies, resembled two stars in the rift of a cloud. Before
the sun set he withdrew.

The Ancients felt themselves relieved of a great anxiety, when he
left Carthage. The people had received him with even more enthusiastic
acclamations than on the first occasion. If Hamilcar and the King of the
Numidians triumphed alone over the Mercenaries it would be impossible
to resist them. To weaken Barca they therefore resolved to make the aged
Hanno, him whom they loved, a sharer in the deliverance of Carthage.

He proceeded immediately towards the western provi