"I love my city well, and I cannot remain impassive and witness its sacrifice, its interminable agony. Few are aware of the actual conditions, but I can tell you, Actæon, because you are discreet. We are much worse off than the people realize. There is not a scrap of meat left for those who are defending our walls. This morning there was nothing but mud in the bottom of the cisterns. We have no water. A few days more of resistance and we shall be forced to eat dead bodies like those soulless creatures who feed by night. We shall have to kill the children to placate our thirst with their blood." Alcon was silent for a moment; he passed his hand over his forehead with a gesture of pain as if to obliterate terrible recollections. "No one knows better than we Elders what occurs in the city," he continued. "The gods must shudder with horror when they see the deeds done in Saguntum since they abandoned her. Listen and forget, Actæon," he said in a low voice and with an accent of fear. "Yesterday two women, maddened by hunger, drew lots to choose which one of their children they should devour. We Elders have closed our eyes and our ears; we have not desired to see nor to hear, understanding that punishment would only serve to increase the horrors. The men who are fighting on the walls are chewing the leather from their weapons to deceive hunger. Their flesh is loosened from their bones, they weaken and fall as if wounded by an invisible stroke from the gods. We have resisted for nearly eight months; two-thirds of the city no longer exists. We have done enough to demonstrate before heaven and before man how Saguntum fulfills her oaths." The Greek bowed his head, convinced by Alcon's arguments. "Moreover the valor of the city is breaking down," continued the Elder. "Faith is dying. The omens are all against us. There are people who, during the night, have seen globes of fire rise from the Acropolis and fly toward the sea, plunging into the waters like shooting stars which cut through the blue of heaven with a stream of light. The people believe that they are the penates of the city, who, divining the coming destruction of Saguntum, are abandoning it to go and establish themselves on the other side of the sea whence they came. Last night, those who were watching up there in the temple of Hercules saw a serpent glide from beneath the tomb of Zacynthus, hissing as if it were wounded. It was blue, with golden stars--the serpent which bit Zacynthus and was the cause of the foundation of the city around the tomb of the hero. He crawled between the feet of the astonished watchers; he fled down the mount, and crept off across the plain in the direction of the sea. He also has abandoned us; the sacred reptile which was like the tutelary god of Saguntum." "It may not be true," said the Greek. "It may be the hallucinations of a people tormented by hunger."