Enter ACTE, ushered by SLAVE
POPPAEA. [Vehemently.] Take Nero! I am dying.
ACTE. Ah, not yet!
POPPAEA. I am dying. But you shall not hold him long——
O, do not think it. Can you queen his heart?
Can you be storm a moment, sun the next?
A month, a long day under open skies,
Would find your art exhausted, ended. I!
I was a hundred women in an hour,
And sweeter at each moment than them all.
Why, I have struck him in the face and laughed.
ACTE. I love him: that concerns not him, nor you.
A different goal I would have sought for him,
A garment not of purple, but of peace.
POPPAEA. Of peace! Ha, ha!
ACTE. Vain now—I know it, vain.
But if your words are true, and death is on you,
Let us two at the least be friends at last.
POPPAEA. I bear no rancour—and yet if I dreamed
That I was leaving you upon his bosom—
But no: let there be peace between us two.
[ACTE comes and kisses her.
Your kiss falls kind upon my loneliness.
But, Acte, to let go of glory thus—
For I have drunk of empire, and what cup
Afterward can you offer to these lips?