‘It is Pomponia Græcina. She told the janitor that though you might not see others who belong to the Court, perhaps you would see her.’
‘Yes; I will see her. She is not like the rest of them. She is sincere, and her presence is like balm.’
Pomponia entered, and could scarcely believe that the lady who lay there, with her dress disregarded, her face haggard and stricken, her eyes dim, her cheeks stained with tears, her hair dishevelled, and, as Pomponia thought, of a perceptibly greyer tinge than when she had seen her last—was indeed the once magnificent and all-powerful Augusta.
An impulse of pity overcame her, and she knelt down by the couch of the unhappy Empress, who pressed her fevered lips to her cheeks, and then wept uncontrollably with her head on Pomponia’s shoulder.
The two ladies presented a strange contrast, not only in their dress, but in their entire aspect. Agrippina was still arrayed in the magnificent robes in which she had received her son, and which, irksome as they were, she had been too weary to lay aside. Pomponia was in the dark mourning dress which she had worn for so many years since the death of the friend of her childhood, Julia, the grand-daughter of Tiberius and mother of Rubellius Plautus. The tresses of Agrippina, though disarranged, showed the elaborate care of the ornatrix. Pomponia wore her dark hair, now beginning to silver, in the simplest bands, and without an ornament. But the chief difference was in their faces. Pride and cruel determination, as well as calamity, had left their marks on the noble lineaments of the daughter of Germanicus; over the calm face of the wife of Plautius it was evident that the shadows of many a sorrow had been cast, but the sorrow was irradiated by hope and gladness, and in her eyes was the sweet light of the Peace of God.
‘Augusta,’ she said, ‘I have come to congratulate you on the defeat of a nefarious conspiracy. I thought I should find you happier after many trials. Pardon me if I have thrust myself too presumptuously upon your sorrow.’
‘Not so,’ said Agrippina. ‘You are always welcome; and more so now than ever. You sought me not in my hour of prosperity. No one would come to me in my hour of ruin who did not wish me well.’
‘It is not, I trust, an hour of ruin. The plot against you has been ignominiously defeated. You may have many happy days in store.’
‘Nay, Pomponia; happiness can never be linked again with the name of Agrippina. It is a dream. I did not find it in the days of my splendour; it is little likely that I should find it when all desert me and I am brought low. I know no one who is happy. We are the slaves and playthings of a horrible destiny, which is blind and pitiless and irresistible. Are you happy?’
‘Yes, Augusta, I am happy, though hardly, perhaps, in the sense you mean. To me, as to all of us, life has brought bitter trials. These dark robes tell of the loss of one whom I loved as my own soul, and even at this moment I am threatened with terrible calamity—perhaps with exile, perhaps with death. On all sides, there are terrors and anxieties, and the state of society seems to portend catastrophe and the vengeance of heaven, for wickedness can hardly go to any greater lengths than now. Yet I am happy.’