Your heart has closed against me. Am I not Asbyte, she whom you knew in New Carthage? Do you not love me when you see me made ugly and hardened by war? Tell me that, and I will become a woman again, I will bedeck myself with jewels, I will abandon my Amazons and surround myself with Greek slaves, I will cover myself with ointments which will change my skin back to its pristine freshness, and I will follow you on your marches lying on a litter with curtains of purple." "No!" Hannibal made haste to reply, with enthusiasm. "I love you as you are. The beloved of Hannibal can only be an Amazon like yourself, who have made many warriors fall beneath your charger." "Then why do you flee from me? Why do you abandon me, why forget the sweetness of our early love? See that nightingale, at which a moment ago you aimed your arrow! In the midst of an army camp, before a besieged city, it sings and sings, calling to its mate, heedless of the horrors of war, unconscious of the stench of blood which rises from these fields. Let us be like him! Let us make war; but let us also love each other, and let us ride through the battles with our bodies thrilled with love!" "No, Asbyte," said the African gloomily. "That felicity is impossible; I love you, but we cannot understand each other. You complain because I see in you only an Amazon, when you are a woman; you, in return, see in me only a man, and I am more than man. I am not the demigod you imagine; I am something more; I am a formidable machine of war, without heart or sense of pity, created only to crush men and nations who obstruct my passage." Hannibal said this with conviction, beating his firm chest, straightening his figure with sombre majesty as he declared his destructive power. "I would love you if I were a man capable of wasting my time in such sweet folly, but when have you seen the eagle spend all his time in the nest caressing his mate, without desire to soar aloft and fall upon the quarry? Those who have talons cannot caress, and I was born to make prey of the world, or else for the world to crush me. Love? A sweet occupation, I grant you! In the past, full of blood and of battles, the only oases of my joy were those days in New Carthage when I believed that Tanith herself, with all her divine beauty, had deigned to come down to my arms. But that is over; Hannibal has other loves that attract him and dominate him; he loves his sword, he loves all that the enemy possesses, and he cannot sleep with tranquility for thinking of Rome, whom he desires to crush within these arms! How far away she is!" The Amazon made a gesture of despair at the passion with which the chieftain declared his ambitions.