"Let that pass, then. Where is he now? How was it you suffered him to escape?"
"I did not suffer him to escape; I took care that he should escape."
"What!" cried the general in a furious voice--so far he had succeeded in keeping calm--"what! you deliberately let him go! This is sheer treason! What have you to say?"
"I could not let him be dealt with as the others were dealt with. To have given him up after that would have been a crime."
"What audacity! Who are you, paltry Greek that you are, to make yourself a ruler and a judge in Carthage? That is enough. It is your life for his life. Take him away!" he roared to the guards who had the prisoner in their charge.
Cleanor was taken back to the guard-room, and shortly afterwards transferred from that to a cell in the basement of the house, a squalid, stifling, ill-smelling place, dimly lighted by a strongly-barred aperture in the roof. Here he spent five days. Every morning his jailer opened the door just long enough to put within it a loaf of coarse rye-bread and a flagon of doubtful-looking water. He saw and heard nothing more during the day.
On the sixth day he was again brought before Hasdrubal. The general was, or seemed to be, in a different mood. He affected to be much disturbed at the prisoners squalid appearance, inquired how he had been treated, and when he heard the details declared that his orders had been entirely misunderstood. Cleanor knew exactly how much value was to be attached to these protestations, but prudently kept his counsel and thanked the general for his kind intentions.
"I have been wishing," Hasdrubal continued, "to have some conversation about a matter in which you might be very useful to Carthage, but you are really not fit for it. Let me at all events do what I can to repair this deplorable mistake."
He whispered some instructions to an attendant, and Cleanor was ushered out of the room, being treated with a politeness which was in strong contrast to the rude handling which he had received on the former occasion. He was provided with a bath and a change of clothes, and afterwards sat down to an excellent meal.
Later on in the day he was again summoned into the general's presence. "I cannot but think," said Hasdrubal, "that you were wrong in the matter of the prisoner, but you meant well; yes, you meant well, and it may turn out for the best after all. The prisoner who escaped was a Scipio, was he not?"