“I am his father!”
Hamilcar walked on; the other followed him with stooping loins, bent hams, and head thrust forward. His face was convulsed with unspeakable anguish, and he was choking with suppressed sobs, so eager was he at once to question him, and to cry: “Mercy!”
At last he ventured to touch him lightly with one finger on the elbow.
“Are you going to—?” He had not the strength to finish, and Hamilcar stopped quite amazed at such grief.
He had never thought—so immense was the abyss separating them from each other—that there could be anything in common between them. It even appeared to him a sort of outrage, an encroachment upon his own privileges. He replied with a look colder and heavier than an executioner’s axe; the slave swooned and fell in the dust at his feet. Hamilcar strode across him.
The three black-robed men were waiting in the great hall, and standing against the stone disc. Immediately he tore his garments, and rolled upon the pavement uttering piercing cries.
“Ah! poor little Hannibal! Oh! my son! my consolation! my hope! my life! Kill me also! take me away! Woe! Woe!” He ploughed his face with his nails, tore out his hair, and shrieked like the women who lament at funerals. “Take him away then! my suffering is too great! begone! kill me like him!” The servants of Moloch were astonished that the great Hamilcar was so weak-spirited. They were almost moved by it.
A noise of naked feet became audible, with a broken throat-rattling like the breathing of a wild beast speeding along, and a man, pale, terrible, and with outspread arms appeared on the threshold of the third gallery, between the ivory pots; he exclaimed:
“My child!”
Hamilcar threw himself with a bound upon the slave, and covering the man’s mouth with his hand exclaimed still more loudly: