For if the men of Carthage had but learned that such a happy land existed anywhere under the sun, they would have quitted their native land in troops, the palaces would have fallen to pieces from decay, bats and serpents would have dwelt within the gates, and thus the day would have come when the stranger, on hearing the name of Carthage mentioned, would have asked: "But where, then, is the site of that great city?"
CHAPTER II
BAR NOEMI, THE BENJAMINITE
In the days when great Tyre still stood in all her glory, and her merchant vessels left not even the East Indies unexplored, there dwelt in that city a rich seaman, Bar Noemi by name.
His name tells us at once that he was a native of Palestine. He was, indeed, one of the few survivors of those Benjaminites who had been extirpated, together with their city, by the men of the other eleven tribes, to avenge the dishonour done to a single woman. And the punishment was certainly deserved—the men of Benjamin had dishonoured a woman who came to their city as a guest. It was a righteous deed to root out such men. Bar Noemi was still a mere child when he escaped from destruction; he had had no share, therefore, in the sins of his fathers, and he knew besides that they had been put to the edge of the sword by the Lord's command, the strong God, Jehova the avenger, who, midst the thunders of Sinai, had written on the tables of stone with His own hand: "The face of the strange woman shall be sacred to the strange man, and whosoever trespasses against her shall die the death!"
Bar Noemi knew very well that this sentence had been rigorously executed upon the inhabitants of a whole city, yet he never renounced the faith of his fathers on that account; but clave strictly to the traditions of Holy Zion even in the midst of the city of delights, and sacrificed continually to the strong avenging God who visits indeed the sins of the fathers upon the children even to the fourth generation, but also rewards their virtues down to the thousandth generation.
Yet the gods of Tyre and Sidon were ever so much more agreeable. They suffered the altar of Love to stand in their temples. Anybody was free to offer thereon doves or goats, according as his love was chaste or unchaste. No one was taken to task for the sins of love; on the contrary, mortals were initiated into mysteries which taught them how to approach, through insensible gradations of delight, the heaven of bliss—or hopeless damnation.
Bar Noemi neither visited Astarte's temple, nor allowed himself to be initiated into her magical mysteries. He was satisfied with observing his own religious feasts and fasts with prayer and thanksgiving, and every year scoured all the boards of his house at the Passover, and raised the green booths in his garden at the Feast of Tabernacles. And the inhabitants of Tyre let him do as he chose. A trading nation is wont to be tolerant in matters of religion. Besides, the religion of Israel was nothing new to the Tyrians. The two nations had often come into contact, sometimes with iron in their hands, but much more often with gold and silver. As Bar Noemi reached man's estate, he was reckoned among the richest merchants in Tyre. His fifty galleys conveyed purple stuffs, real pearls, and oriental spices from continent to continent.
He himself was the hardiest of mariners. He was frequently absent with his ship twelve months at a time. His sailors were all of them picked men of the tribe of Levi.
Bar Noemi was the first to discover how to sail from the Red Sea to Carthage without being obliged to transport one's wares on camels from one coast to the other, thus avoiding the grievous, exorbitant tolls imposed by the Egyptians upon the Phœnician merchants. None of the older mariners had found out the secret. The Cape of Good Hope was still an unknown point to the trading world, and men shrank back in terror from the hostile winds and tempests which environed it.
At Carthage, Bar Noemi had learnt to know the daughter of a merchant, one of those Punic beauties whom the Roman ladies loved so much to imitate. The fairest of complexions was made still more fair by wonderful saffron locks; the large blue eyes had long black lashes; the jet eyebrows were arched and bushy; the lips a deep purple, and the skin as soft as velvet, and as white as alabaster.