"What the sword cannot do, the flames will," exclaimed the King, threateningly. "I will sweep through them like the wrath of God! Up, follow me, my brothers!" He rushed out of the room. "Order the hundreds of horsemen to mount, Gibamund," said Zazo, as they crossed the threshold,--"the household troop, under faithful Markomer. For the Vandals no longer obey the King's word unless at the same time they see the glitter of the King's sword." The archdeacon, muttering softly to himself and shaking his head, slowly followed the three Asdings. CHAPTER X The "lower city" of Carthage extended northward to the harbor, westward to the suburb of Aklas, the Numidian, and eastward to the Tripolitan suburb. Directly beyond its southern gate, covering a space more than two leagues long and a league wide, lay the oft-mentioned "Grove of Venus" or "Grove of the Holy Virgin." From the most ancient pagan times this grove was the scene of the sumptuous, sensual revels which were proverbial throughout the Roman Empire. "African" was the word used to express the acme of such orgies. The whole coast of the bay in this neighborhood, kept moist by the damp sea-air, had originally been covered with dense woods. The larger portion had long since yielded to the growth of the city; but, by the Emperor's order, a considerable part was retained and transformed into a magnificent park, adorned with all the skill and the lavish expenditure which characterized the time of the Cæsars. The main portion of this grove consisted of date palms. These were introduced by the Phoenicians. The palm, say the Arabs, gladly sets her feet as queen of the desert into damp sand, but lifts her head into the glow of the sun. It thrived magnificently here, and in centuries of growth the slender columns of the trunks attained a height of fifty feet; no sunbeam could penetrate vertically through the roof of drooping leaves of those thick crowns, which rustled and nodded dreamily in the wind, wooing, inviting to sleep, to unresisting indolence, to drowsy thoughts. But they stood sufficiently far apart to allow the light and air to enter from the sides and to permit smaller trees (dwarf palms), bushes, and flowers to grow luxuriantly beneath the shelter of the lofty crowns. Besides the palms, other noble trees had been first planted and fostered by human hands, then had increased through the peerless fertility of nature: the plane-tree, with its lustrous light bark; the pine, the cypress, and the laurel; the olive, which loves the salt breath of the sea; the pomegranate, so naturalized here that its fruit was called "the Carthaginian apple"; while figs, citrus-trees, apricots, peaches, almonds, chestnuts, pistachios, terebinths, oleanders, and myrtles,--sometimes as large trees, sometimes as shrubs,--formed, as it were, the undergrowth of the glorious palm forest.