Polycletus hesitated.
‘Go on, man!’ exclaimed Nero, impatiently. ‘In any case you are not to blame for anything she said.’
‘I am ashamed to repeat the Augusta’s words,’ said the messenger. ‘But, if I must tell you, she said: “My son gives a part to me, who have given all to him. Whatever he has he owes to me. He sends me these, I suppose, that I may put in no claim to the rest. Let him keep his finery. There are things that I value more highly.” And then she rose, and spurning with her foot the robe which lay in her way, she swept out of the room.’
Nero bit his lip, and his eyes gleamed with rage. He was maddened by the meaning smiles of Senecio, and the expression of cynical amusement which passed over the face of Petronius.
Otho came to the rescue. ‘Do not be disturbed, Nero,’ he said. ‘Agrippina only forgot for the moment that you are now Emperor.’
‘The Augusta evidently thinks that you are still a boy in the purple-bordered toga,’ sneered Tigellinus.
Nero dashed down his dice-box, overturned the table at which they were sitting, and began to pace the room in extreme agitation. He had not yet quite shaken off the familiarity of his mother’s dominance. He was genuinely afraid of her, and he knew to what fearful lengths she might be hurried by her passion and her hate.
‘I cannot stand it,’ he muttered to himself. ‘I am no match for Agrippina. Who knows but what she may prepare a mushroom, or something else, for me? I hate Rome. I hate the Empire. I will lay aside the purple. I only want to enjoy myself. I will go to Rhodes and live there. I can sing, if I can do nothing else, and if all else fails, I will support myself with singing in the streets of Alexandria. The astrologers have promised me that I shall be king in Jerusalem, or somewhere in the East. Here I am utterly wretched.’
He flung himself angrily on a couch, and a red spot rose upon his cheeks. ‘I wonder how she dares to insult me thus! If I had sent the robe and jewels to Octavia, the poor child would have touched heaven with her finger. If I had sent them to Acte, her soft eyes would have beamed with love. Of what use is it to be Emperor, if my mother is to flout and domineer like this?’
‘Does not Cæsar know what gives her this audacity?’ asked Tigellinus, in a low tone.