Pallas raised his hands, half in horror, half in admiration. Careless of every moral consideration, he had never dipped his hands in blood. He had lived in the midst of a profoundly corrupt society from his earliest youth. He knew that poisonings were frequent amid the gilded wickedness and hollow misery of the Roman aristocracy. He knew that they had been far from infrequent in the House of Cæsar, and that Eudemus, the physician of Drusus, son of the Emperor Tiberius, had poisoned his lord. Yet before the cool hardihood of Agrippina’s criminality he stood secretly appalled. Would it not have been better for him, after all, to have followed the example of Narcissus, and to have remained faithful to his master? How long would he be necessary to the Empress and her son? And when he ceased to be useful, what would be his fate?
Agrippina read his thoughts in his face, and said, ‘I suppose that Claudius is still lingering over the wine cup. Conduct me back to him. Acerronia, my lady-in-waiting, will follow us.’
‘He has been carried to his own room,’ said Pallas; ‘but if you wish to see him, I will attend you.’
He led the way, and gave the watchword of the night to the Prætorian guards and their officer, Pudens. The room of the Emperor was only across the court, and the slaves and freedmen and pages who kept watch over it made way for the Augusta and the all-powerful freedman.
‘The Emperor still sleeps,’ said the groom of the chamber as they entered.
‘Good,’ answered Agrippina. ‘You may depart. We have business to transact with him, and will await his wakening. Give me the lamp. Acerronia will remain without.’
The slave handed her a golden lamp richly chased, and left the chamber. There on a couch of citron-wood lay the Emperor, overcome, as was generally the case in the evening, with the quantities of strong wine he had drunk. His breathing was deep and stertorous; his thin grey hairs were dishevelled; his purple robe stained, crumpled, and disordered. His mouth was open, his face flushed; the laurel wreath had fallen awry over his forehead, and, in the imbecile expression of intoxication, every trace of dignity and nobleness was obliterated from his features.
They stood and looked at him under the lamp which Agrippina uplifted so that the light might stream upon his face.
‘Sot and dotard!’ she exclaimed, in low tones, but full of scorn and hatred. ‘Did not his own mother, Antonia, call him “a portent of a man”? I am not surprised that my brother Gaius once ordered him to be flung into the Rhone; or that he and his rude guests used to slap him on the face, and pelt him with olives and date-stones when he fell asleep at the table. I have often seen them smear him with grape juice, and draw his stockings over his hands, that he might rub his face with them when he awoke! To think that such a man should be lord of the world, when my radiant Nero, so young, so beautiful, so gifted, might be seated on his throne for all the world to admire and love!’
‘The Emperor has learning,’ said Pallas, looking on him with pity. ‘His natural impulses are all good. He has been a very kind and indulgent master.’