And the cooks, butlers, grooms, runners, and litter-carriers, the men belonging to the vapour-baths, and the women with their children, all ranged themselves in a single line in the garden from the mercantile house to the deer park. They held their breath. An immense silence prevailed in Megara. The sun was lengthening across the lagoon at the foot of the catacombs. The peacocks were screeching. Hamilcar walked along step by step. “What am I to do with these old creatures?” he said. “Sell them! There are too many Gauls: they are drunkards! and too many Cretans: they are liars! Buy me some Cappadocians, Asiatics, and Negroes.” He was astonished that the children were so few. “The house ought to have births every year, Giddenem. You will leave the huts open every night to let them mingle freely.” He then had the thieves, the lazy, and the mutinous shown to him. He distributed punishments, with reproaches to Giddenem; and Giddenem, ox-like, bent his low forehead, with its two broad intersecting eyebrows. “See, Eye of Baal,” he said, pointing out a sturdy Libyan, “here is one who was caught with the rope round his neck.” “Ah! you wish to die?” said the Suffet scornfully. “Yes!” replied the slave in an intrepid tone. Then, without heeding the precedent or the pecuniary loss, Hamilcar said to the serving-men: “Away with him!” Perhaps in his thoughts he intended a sacrifice. It was a misfortune which he inflicted upon himself in order to avert more terrible ones. Giddenem had hidden those who were mutilated behind the others. Hamilcar perceived them. “Who cut off your arm?” “The soldiers, Eye of Baal.” Then to a Samnite who was staggering like a wounded heron: “And you, who did that to you?” It was the governor, who had broken his leg with an iron bar. This silly atrocity made the Suffet indignant; he snatched the jet necklace out of Giddenem’s hands. “Cursed be the dog that injures the flock! Gracious Tanith, to cripple slaves! Ah! you ruin your master! Let him be smothered in the dunghill. And those that are missing? Where are they? Have you helped the soldiers to murder them?” His face was so terrible that all the women fled. The slaves drew back and formed a large circle around them; Giddenem was frantically kissing his sandals; Hamilcar stood upright with his arms raised above him. But with his understanding as clear as in the sternest of his battles, he recalled a thousand odious things, ignominies from which he had turned aside; and in the gleaming of his wrath he could once more see all his disasters simultaneously as in the lightnings of a storm. The governors of the country estates had fled through terror of the soldiers, perhaps through collusion with them; they were all deceiving him; he had restrained himself too long. “Bring them here!” he cried; “and brand them on the forehead with red-hot irons as cowards!”