From that moment she felt that the coloured bubble of her life had burst. Never had she been so wretched. Her exile at Pandataria had been but brief, and she was then young, and she had many schemes on hand, and might hope for immeasurable success. But now her last arrow had sped from the string, and had fallen useless to the ground. The cold shadow of her son’s displeasure blighted her whole being. She—in whose honour coins had been struck; in whose name decrees had run; under whose auspices colonies had been founded; to whom kings and governors had once made their appeal, and for whose ambition kingdoms had been too small—suddenly found she was nothing and nobody. Even such a creature as Calvia Crispinilla had more influence, and was more sought after than she. The house of Antonia, in which she lived, was shunned like a lazar-house by all who wished to stand well with Nero. No one visited her, no one consoled her, no one helped to dissipate her weariness. The only exceptions were a few ladies whom she knew too well to trust. They did not come to see her out of affection, but because they hated her, and liked to annoy her with the cold curiosity of an insulting pity. Among these was Junia Silana. In old days she had been a bosom-friend of the Augusta, but the ostensible friendship gave ample opportunity for feline amenities on both sides. Junia had been the wife of the handsome Silius, who had fallen a victim to the love of Messalina. In her early widowhood she had been sought in marriage by Sextius Africanus, but Agrippina, not wishing to see him made too powerful by the ample wealth of the childless Silana, had confidentially dissuaded him from the marriage, by telling him that Silana was a woman of dissolute character, and was now getting on in years. The secret had reached the ears of Silana, and while openly she continued to speak of her ‘sweetest and dearest Agrippina,’ she vowed an exemplary revenge.
And now that the time seemed ripe, she matured her plans.
It would be useless to trump up the old charges that Agrippina mourned the murder of Britannicus, or spread abroad the wrongs of Octavia. She determined to devise something entirely new, and to charge Agrippina with the design of marrying and forming a conspiracy with Rubellius Plautus, who, like Nero, was, on the mother’s side, a great-great-grandson of the deified Augustus. Silana sent two of her freedmen, Iturius and Calvisius, with this intelligence to Atimetus, a freedman of Domitia, Nero’s aunt. Atimetus had once been a fellow-slave with Paris. He went to his old friend, and urged him to go at once to Nero, and to denounce the supposed plot with all his consummate vehemence and skill.
The actor was not naturally a villain, but he had been trained in an abominable school, and had erased the words ‘ought’ and ‘ought not’ from his vocabulary as completely as most of his contemporaries. That night, at a late hour, he hurried to the Emperor, not in the glittering dress which usually set off his perfect beauty, but in dark and disordered array. His familiarity with Nero procured him at all times a ready entrance into the Palace. He found the Emperor still carousing amid his favourites, and he was received with a burst of welcome by the flushed and full-fed guests.
‘Now this is good of you, Paris,’ said Nero. ‘You alone were wanting to our mirth. Come, brim this crystal vase with our best Falernian, and then let us see a spectacle which would thrill the Muses and the Graces even if Apollo were with them. But—can this be Paris?—our bright, gay, lovely Paris? Why, what is the matter?’
‘Matter enough,’ said Paris, in such accents of woe, and with such a flood of tears, that the guests could not help weeping with him. ‘Dare I speak, Cæsar?’
‘Tell us all,’ said Nero, raising himself on his elbow in agitation. ‘What has happened? Have the legions revolted? Is the prætorium in an uproar?’
‘Not yet,’ said Paris; ‘but—Agrippina—’
‘Ha!’ said Nero. ‘Go on’—for the actor’s voice seemed to be speechless with emotion.
‘Agrippina—and—Rubellius Plautus—’