[Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert]@TWC D-Link book
Salammbo

CHAPTER II
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He might have been taken for some big idol rough-hewn in a block of stone; for a pale leprosy, which was spread over his whole body, gave him the appearance of an inert thing.

His nose, however, which was hooked like a vulture's beak, was violently dilated to breathe in the air, and his little eyes, with their gummed lashes, shone with a hard and metallic lustre.

He held a spatula of aloe-wood in his hand wherewith to scratch his skin.
At last two heralds sounded their silver horns; the tumult subsided, and Hanno commenced to speak.
He began with an eulogy of the gods and the Republic; the Barbarians ought to congratulate themselves on having served it.

But they must show themselves more reasonable; times were hard, "and if a master has only three olives, is it not right that he should keep two for himself ?" The old Suffet mingled his speech in this way with proverbs and apologues, nodding his head the while to solicit some approval.
He spoke in Punic, and those surrounding him (the most alert, who had hastened thither without their arms), were Campanians, Gauls, and Greeks, so that no one in the crowd understood him.

Hanno, perceiving this, stopped and reflected, swaying himself heavily from one leg to the other.
It occurred to him to call the captains together; then his heralds shouted the order in Greek, the language which, from the time of Xanthippus, had been used for commands in the Carthaginian armies.
The guards dispersed the mob of soldiers with strokes of the whip; and the captains of the Spartan phalanxes and the chiefs of the Barbarian cohorts soon arrived with the insignia of their rank, and in the armour of their nation.


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