And, as they sorrowfully left the scene of martyrdom, the grey light which had touched the eastern clouds began to flush into the rosy dawn, and the sun rose on the world’s new day.
CHAPTER LXV
IN THE CLUTCH OF NEMESIS
‘I’ll find him out,
Or drag him by the curls to a foul death,
Cursed as his life.’
Milton, Comus.
‘And so I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of the holy...: this also is vanity.’—Eccles. viii. 10.
It was on the evening of June 8 that Nymphidius Sabinus betrayed Nero, and, by the forged promise of an enormous donative, which was never paid, induced the Prætorians to embrace the cause of Galba. A worthless master makes worthless slaves. This man, whom Nero had lifted out of the dust as a reward for his crimes, sold his bad benefactor without a blush.
Nero heard the grim news before he retired to rest in the evening, and he was well aware that the morrow must decide his fate. At midnight he leapt from his troubled couch, and from that moment there began for him once more the long slow agony of an irremediably shameful death. The first thing he discovered was that all the soldiers who guarded the Palace, and whose barracks were in the Excubitorium, had deserted their posts. In utter despair, he sent for advice to those whom he deemed to be his friends. As he received from them no word of answer, he went to their houses, one by one, in the dead of night, with a few attendants. Inconceivably dreary was that walk through the dark streets, which, as he passed by the silent palaces, seemed to be haunted by the ghosts of the many whom he had slain. But he found every door closed against him. Not a single response was made to his appeals. Almost mad with misery, he returned to his splendid chamber in the Golden House, only to find that during his brief absence the attendants and slaves had fled, after plundering it of all its magnificence, even to the embroidered purple coverlets and the golden box which contained Locusta’s poison. Recalling the memory of his murdered mother, he sought everywhere for the amulet—the bracelet containing the serpent’s skin found near his cradle—which Agrippina had clasped upon his boyish arm. But he had once carelessly flung it away, in a fit of petulance, and now it could nowhere be seen. Then he sought for Spicillus, the mirmillo, to stab him; but neither he nor any one else could be found to fulfil the office. ‘So,’ he said, with one of the small smart epigrams which showed throughout these last scenes that the spirit of melodrama had not deserted him—’so, it seems, I have neither a friend nor an enemy!’