“Ay! indeed, it is a meet cause for revenge that thou hast, O Hanno, in being thus separated, if only for a short space of time, from thy lovely daughters yonder.”
“My daughters, my daughters!” spluttered out Hanno excitedly. “Why, thou knowest I have no daughters, Hamilcar. Dost thou mean to insult me?”
“I insult thee, noble Hanno! Are those noble young beauties, then, not thy daughters? Surely thou must pardon me if I am mistaken, but meseems they are of an appropriate age, and thou saidst but this very minute that my soldiers, meaning, I suppose, the soldiers of the State, had prevented thee from joining thy family yonder. Of what, then, consists thy family?”
At this sally there was a loud laugh, not only among the young girls on the balcony, but from all the assembled senators. For it was a matter of common ridicule that Hanno, whose first wife had been childless, had put her away in her middle age, and taken advantage of the recent law permitting polygamy to take to wife at once half a dozen young women belonging to noble families, whose parents were afraid to oppose such a dangerous and powerful person. Hanno was furious, but strove to turn the tables by ignoring this last remark.
“Whither goest thou, Hamilcar, with all this army? Hast come to conquer Carthage?” he asked sarcastically.
“And how could I conquer Carthage when it contains a Hanno, conqueror apparently of all the hearts therein? Could Lutatius Catulus have conquered Lilybæum even had but the mighty Admiral Hanno remained a little longer in the neighbourhood?”
This reference to Hanno’s defeat at the Ægatian Islands made him furious. He could not bear the smiles he saw upon his young wives’ faces and the sneers he imagined upon the faces of the senators behind him. He broke out violently:
“Whither goest thou, Hamilcar, with all these troops? As thy co-Suffete I demand to know, lest thou prove to be plotting against the State,” and he stamped upon the ground in rage. Hamilcar smiled sarcastically.
“I go, Hanno, where all good Carthaginians should go on a day like this, to offer a sacrifice to the gods.”
“Ah!” cried Hanno, seeing a chance, “ ’tis well that spite of all former evasions thou hast at length determined to do thy duty to thy country by frying yonder brat of thine as a thanksgiving to Moloch. I would that I might be there to see the imp frizzle, and all the rest of the Barcine tribe as well.”