“What dost thou take me for, oh, Hasdrubal the son of Hamilcar? Am I like a babbling brook, or like the Princess Cœcilia, widow of thy late namesake and brother-in-law?”
“Whom I detest most cordially. Nay, nay!” replied Hasdrubal, “may the gods forbid that thou shouldst resemble her, for she is odious! I have it in my mind to crucify her one of these days to encourage virtue in the other women in the palace. For she is most unvirtuous, and worse than that, most unwise. What can I do with her if I slay her not, thou knowest her well Elissa?”
“Watch her carefully, or marry her to someone, that is my advice. To crucify her would be most unjust, for she hath hitherto harmed no one. Her sole vice is folly, but that is, it must be owned, extreme.”
“Well, well, we can see about the fool later on. I shall perhaps know how to deal with her. Methinks I will marry her to one of my lieutenants. There is a certain prefect of horse that would suit her admirably. He is of gigantic stature, almost as tall as thine own Maharbal.”
“And she adores large men,” replied Elissa. “Well, I counsel thee, mine uncle Hasdrubal, marry thou Cœcilia unto him without delay, then shalt thou be relieved of a constant danger in the palace. For there is no greater danger than in the constant presence of a foolish woman!”
“ ’Tis true, my niece—’tis most true. I must consider it. But now let us to the harbour and see about the ships.”
So the pair left the palace together and strolled down to the harbour, where all fitting arrangements were made for the voyage to Africa.
A fortnight later Elissa found herself with Sophonisba, now a girl of seventeen, and her father Hasdrubal, the son of Gisco, arriving at the Court of Syphax, and there they were most royally entertained.
Syphax himself was a splendid Numidian. Some forty years of age, he was handsome, affable, well-instructed, and warlike. His bearing was indeed that of a prince. Frank and good-natured, generous to a fault, he was a man who never suspected evil in others, because there was absolutely no guile in his own disposition. His leanings were all towards Carthage, for until latterly the Carthaginians had ever treated him well, and if latterly they had not done so, he, with his generous nature, put the neglect simply down to the expenses incurred by the long continued war.
There were present at his court, which was most magnificent and luxurious, his nephew Massinissa, a small but muscular and wiry man of an entirely different type to Syphax himself, and also the members of a Roman embassy. And the head of this embassy was Scipio Junior, who wore his left arm in a sling, and looked pale and an invalid. For he had been sorely wounded in two places at a comparatively recent battle, in which fight the man who had struck him down had been his old antagonist Maharbal. Now, by some strange dispensation of the gods, it was his lot to meet as friends in a foreign court not only an embassy of his country’s enemies the Carthaginians, but also the beautiful daughter of Hannibal himself, Elissa, the betrothed of the very man whom upon three separate occasions he had met hand to hand, and upon every occasion to his own discomfiture. And now that he had met Elissa, he fell deeply in love with her at first sight.