ACTE. [Starting up.] And you, when have you two dissuaded him?
Or when forbidden? Do you teach him shun
Languor or luxury? You lure him thither.
SENECA. 'Tis true that we have not dissuaded him,
But out of high deliberate policy
Have suffered him to tread the path of folly
Rather than mischief. We have ruled the world
With wisdom these five years while he has played.
ACTE. What of Poppaea, Otho's wife. Have you
Restrained that madness? Rather have you not
Screened it and fed it?
SENECA. With the same design;
Better that he should vent his madness thus
In pastime to the State not perilous,
Amuse himself with her rather than Rome.
ACTE. A woman without pity, beautiful.
She makes the earth we tread on false, the heaven
A merest mist, a vapour. Yet her face
Is as the face of a child uplifted, pure;
But plead with lightning rather than those eyes,
Or earthquake rather than that gentle bosom
Rising and falling near thy heart. Her voice
Comes running on the ear as a rivulet;
Yet if you hearken, you shall hear behind
The breaking of a sea whose waves are souls
That break upon a human-crying beach.
Ever she smileth, yet hath never smiled,
And in her lovely laughter is no joy.
Yet hath none fairer strayed into the world,
Or wandered in more witchery through the air,
Since she who drew the dreaming keels of Greece
After her over the Ionian foam.
BURRUS. Better an Emperor fooled than Rome undone!
ACTE. Though all unite to drive him to his doom,
Yet I will not forsake him till he die.
[Exit ACTE.
[Meanwhile there is an uneasy movement among the GIRLS, as at the approach of something sinister. TIGELLINUS enters, gasping.
TIGELLINUS. [Looking after ACTE.] She is a Christian!