CHAPTER LIX THE AGONY OF AN EMPRESS

‘Satiety

And sloth, poor counterfeits of thee,

Mock the tired worlding. Idle Hope

And dire Remembrance interlope,

And vex the feverish slumbers of the mind:

The bubble floats before; the spectre stalks behind.’

Coleridge, Ode to Tranquillity.

In one of the most enchanting rooms of the Golden Palace, surrounded by every object of beauty and splendour which the wealth of kingdoms could supply, sat Poppæa, miserable in heart with a misery which nothing could alleviate—no luxury of the present, no memory of the past, no hope of the future. Like Agrippina, like Seneca, like Nero, she had been ‘cursed with every granted prayer.’ Nothing which this world could give was left for her to attain. Of the honours which overpower, of the riches which clog, of the pleasures which inflame the soul, she had unbounded experience. They had left her heart weary and her life in ashes, and she had never dreamed of the secret which had enabled so many thousands of humble Christians, whom she would have regarded as the dust beneath her feet, to find exaltation in abasement, wealth in penury, and joy in tribulation.

She was Empress; she was Augusta; she was mother of an infant who had been deified; her smile meant prosperity, her frown was death. Of what avail was it all? Could this awful power, could those inestimable gems, could the gorgeousness of her Golden House fill up the void in a heart numbed by satiety and chilled by despair? What had she to aim at? Her enemies had been swept out of her path. What had she left to hope for? There was no object of earthly wishes which she had not attained. Ah! but what work worth doing could she find to do in order to fill up the vacuity of aimless self-indulgence? Who was there to love her, or whom she could love?

She thought of her early home, of her lovely mother, of her consular and triumphant grandfather, of the adoration which had surrounded her in the days of her own dawning beauty. She thought of Rufius Crispinus, the bridegroom of her youth, who had loved her tenderly, and whom she had loved, and of the little son whom she had borne him. He had grown up into a beautiful and gallant child, and the mother had always listened with pride to the anecdotes about him which were secretly brought to her. One of the heaviest of the many afflicting thoughts which were weighing upon her to-day was the manner in which Nero had treated her former husband and her son. Rufius Crispinus had once been Prætorian Præfect, and had been rewarded with consular insignia, but Nero hated his very name because he had been Poppæa’s husband; and he had taken advantage of Piso’s conspiracy first to banish him to Sardinia and recently to order him to put an end to his life. How fatal had her love been to him! It had blighted his career; it had stained his home; it had cut short his life. But what had her poor boy done that he too should perish? She had heard only a few days since that simply because in his games the high-spirited lad had played at being general or emperor, Nero had given orders to his slaves to drown him by suddenly pushing him into the sea while he sat fishing on a rock. She knew that this crime had been committed, and his bright young life sacrificed simply because he shared her blood; and what maddened her most of all was that she dared make no complaint, dared not even to reveal that she was aware of the murder, because to allude to her first husband or her son was always to rouse Nero into a paroxysm of fury. In the brightest and most luxurious room of the Golden House she sat solitary, and sobbing as if her heart would break.

Then she thought of Otho. Dandy as he was, and debauchee, to her at least he had been passionately faithful. She had abandoned Crispinus to live with Otho partly from a certain fascination which hung about his wickedness, but even more from motives of ambition, and because he was Nero’s most cherished favourite. She heard good accounts of his administration in Lusitania. Her intrigues to entangle the love of Nero had succeeded; but would she not have been incomparably more happy if she had remained in the home of Otho, and still more if she had lived as the virtuous wife of her first husband?

For with Nero she had long been disgusted, while she was obliged to feed his gluttonous vanity with perpetual eulogies of his beauty. And when in the close intercourse of daily life she saw to the depths of the man’s nature, it was impossible for her to find any words sufficiently bitter for the expression of her contempt. And this wretched meticulous creature, with no manliness in him; this tenth-rate singer and dilettante twangler on harps; this lump of egregious vanity; this catspaw of Tigellinus, whose effeminacy was steeped in the blood of the innocent which he had shed like water—this womanish man, with none of the worth of Crispinus, and none of the charm of Otho, was to be her husband and companion for life! The day for other lovers, the day when she could have the excitement of secret intrigues, was past, for anything of the kind would mean instant death. And yet she felt more and more that it was impossible to retain secure hold on such love as Nero’s. It was an ignoble love, tigerish and animal, which would evanesce long before her youth and beauty had faded away. If Nero had been a man—if there had been in his passion for her a single ennobling element—she might have retained him in her bondage for long years, as she could certainly have retained Otho. But already Nero preferred to her society the flattery of parasites and minions, and at this very time, though she was very sick and languid with the approach of motherhood, to which she looked forward with neither hope nor happiness, he had left her to her weary solitude, and for days had scarcely so much as seen or talked with her. Was some rival casting her spells over his volatile and evil nature, and taking vengeance on her for the wrongs of Octavia? The thought made her heart burn with a fury of impotent indignation.

She was determined that she would sit up this night and await his return in his own bedchamber; and, as opportunity occurred, would either assail him by reproaches, or win him back by caresses. How could she kill the interminable hours? She had no friend, no child, no confidante—none near her but slaves who hated her and yet trembled at her presence. She had no resources in herself, nothing to occupy her but her own evil thoughts and deplorable regrets.

The Empress grew more and more weary, more and more tormented with intolerable thoughts through the leaden hours. At length, long after midnight, she heard the footsteps of the watch and of many slaves as they conducted Nero to his chamber.

‘What! you here?’ he said with contemptuous indifference as he dismissed his attendants.

She looked at him. He had evidently been drinking, and was fresh from one of the scenes of debauchery which always formed the conclusion of his charioteering displays. For he still wore the dress of a jockey of the green faction, and its succinctness revealed his thin legs and protuberant person. To her he looked a spectacle of ignominy. Where was the passionate courtesy with which her Otho would have greeted her? Where the fond caress which Crispinus would have printed on her cheek? To think that this thing was the Emperor of Rome!

She half-rose from her couch, her pale face aflame with indignation.

‘Jockey!’ she hissed out. ‘Companion of base minions, comrade of coarse gladiators, where have you been? Why do you thus steep manhood in ignominy and drag the purple of Empire through the mud?’

It was the pent-up passion of her woman’s heart which thus burst forth, and it came on Nero like an unexpected blow. He looked at her for a moment with eyes opened to their fullest, and then, staggering forwards, dealt her a brutal kick.

Poppæa, with a groan of anguish, sank swooning to the ground. She lay on the floor as dead, her features white as marble, her hair streaming from its bands and covering the floor with its gleaming waves. The sight sobered Nero. Had he killed her? Furious as he was, he had not intended that. He loudly summoned his slaves and Poppæa’s attendants, and they bore her, still unconscious, to her own apartments. Nero did not tell any one what had happened, but when the physicians saw the bruise which his foot had made they knew everything, and when she had awoke from her swoon Poppæa disdainfully told them the simple truth. From the first they did not conceal from her or from Nero that, in her delicate situation, her life would be in extreme peril.

She lingered on in anguish for many days, her heart broken, her life sacrificed. Nero would fain have testified his maudlin and unavailing remorse. He passionately desired a child to continue his line, and now he had shattered his own hopes. If he had ever loved any woman with anything resembling real love, it was Poppæa. He had only kicked her in the blind rage of ruthless egotism. Nothing had been further from his intention than to murder her or even to cause her excruciating pangs.

He asked to be admitted to her presence, but she refused to see him. She sent to tell him that unless he wished to kill her, he would not visit her. The physicians assured him that the mere suggestion of his entering the room had thrown her into dangerous convulsions. As for the expressions of regret which he had written to her, she was too weak and ill to write any reply, and she deigned to send no message.

There was one person, and one only, whom she wished to see. It was Pomponia Græcina. For her Poppæa had always felt an involuntary respect, and had been deeply impressed by her words and bearing when she came to plead for the Christians. If there were any one who could bring healing to her wounded soul, or suggest one moment’s peace to her tortured heart, it was the stainless wife of Aulus Plautius.

Pomponia had been sick nigh unto death. The prison fever which she had caught in ministering to the Christians had been a virulent typhoid, from which she would not have recovered but for her untroubled conscience, her pure and simple life. For herself she did not wish to live. Not only had her young Aulus been disgraced and murdered, but what she had witnessed of the treatment of the Christians, and what she had heard of their exterminating martyrdoms, had ploughed up the depths of her soul with horror. She almost longed that it could have been permitted her to share the fate of all those dear men and women whom she had known, and who had now passed with white robes and palms in their hands into the presence of their Saviour. But her husband was falling into deep melancholy, and for his sake she made every effort to recover. And because in all her troubles the peace of God was with her, her constitution triumphed over the ravages of the disease, and when she received a message that Poppæa was lying on her death-bed and longed to see her, she was daily regaining her strength in her villa at Tibur.

She did not hesitate;—for what purpose was there in life if it were not to do deeds of helpfulness and love? She was carried in her litter from Tibur to the Golden House, and conducted to the chamber of the Empress. She was spared the trial of meeting Nero, who that day was taking part in a contest of singing and harp-playing on the public stage at the quinquennial Neronia. To prevent that disgrace, the Senate had spontaneously offered him the crowns of eloquence and song. But the semblance of victory did not suit his vanity. He played at being a fair competitor. The theatre was crowded to suffocation, not only with Romans but with provincials, and several knights and burghers had been trodden to death in the opening rush to secure seats. And there stood Nero on the stage, harp in hand, bowing and scraping to the assembly, and trembling with sham nervousness before the adjudicators! It was an infinitely dreary entertainment, for the soldiers stood in every gangway with batons, beating those who did not applaud or who applauded in wrong places, and as no one was allowed to leave the theatre on pain of death, not a few were taken seriously ill, while some braved the risk of dropping down from the outside, and some pretended to faint or die that they might be carried out of the theatre. It was on this occasion that poor Vespasian fell into new disgrace. Harp-playing and singing, whether good or execrable, was not at all in his line, and, do what he would, he found it impossible to prevent himself from falling asleep, as he had already done in the villa at Subiaco. He was caught in the act by Phœbus, the freedman of Nero, who roughly shook him by the shoulder, and abused him without stint. He was very near being condemned to death, but so many persons of distinction interceded for him, that this time Nero spared him. He was, however, forbidden ever again to appear at Court, and received a strong hint that the more entirely he kept out of the way the safer it would be for him. ‘What am I to do?’ he asked Phœbus, ‘and whither am I to go?’ ‘Abi Morboniam! Go to the dogs!’ answered the insolent freedman. A few years later, when Vespasian wore the purple, the freedman implored his pardon for the insult. ‘Abi Morboniam! Go to the dogs!’ was the only answer of the good-humoured Emperor.

While Nero was fooling away his Empire in such scenes Pomponia entered the chamber of death. There lay Poppæa in the miserable wreck of her youth and loveliness. Wicked she had been, and crowned with every gift but that of virtue, yet Pomponia could not but pity one so young and so lost, childless, hopeless, unloved, bereaved—thrice wedded, though little more than girl, and now the victim of her husband’s brutality.

Poppæa turned her languid glance towards the opening door, but when she saw who her visitor was, the poor face, drawn and convulsed with pain, brightened for an instant. The ‘amber’ tresses which Nero had sung of had been cut off to relieve her feverish brows, and Pomponia’s experienced eye detected on her countenance the seal of death.

‘You think that there is no hope?’ whispered Poppæa as she saw the look of compassion deepen on Pomponia’s face. ‘Ah, tell me the truth as it is, and do not flatter me with false hopes as these slaves do.’

‘I fear that you will die, Augusta,’ answered Pomponia, solemnly yet tenderly.

‘Call me not by that vain title. Would that I had never borne it! Would that I had died in childhood, or in my first home! Had I done so, loving faces might have been looking on me now.’

‘Linger not in the thoughts of the past, Poppæa; it is irrevocable.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it is irrevocable; and I cannot bear the faces which look upon me so reproachfully—the face of my murdered husband, Crispinus; of my drowned son; worst of all the sad face of Octavia.’ A shudder ran through all her frame. ‘At every moment,’ she said, ‘directly I close my eyes, her head is before me, as I saw it in all its ghastliness.’

‘Grieve not for Octavia,’ said Pomponia. ‘I have heard all about her death. She died forgiving all her enemies, and in perfect peace.’

‘Peace? Where is it to be had?’ asked Poppæa. ‘It is not a pearl, I think, of any earthly ocean.’

‘No,’ said Pomponia, ‘but of a heavenly.’

‘Heavenly? What is heaven?’ asked Poppæa, wearily. ‘All that we know is life; and life has given me all that pleasure can give, and rank and riches, and the adoration of self; and it has left me so miserable that life itself has grown hateful to me, while yet I fear death.’

Pomponia listened in profound sadness. ‘Poppæa,’ she said, ‘I need not fear now to tell you that I am a Christian; and we Christians have been taught that “he who saveth his life shall lose it, and he who loseth it for Christ’s sake, shall find it.” It is too late for you to redeem the life which you have flung away, or to find the pleasure which you have slain in seeking for it. But while there is life, there is hope. The God in whom we Christians believe is a God of mercy, and we believe also that Christ, the Son of God, died for our sins, and that by Him they may be washed away.’

‘All the waters of Adria would not wash mine away. Oh, Pomponia, do you know that Seneca, and Octavia, and many others owed their deaths to me?’

‘You have sinned deeply; but you have, I know, been taught about the sacred books of the Jews, and have you not read there of a guilty king, an adulterer and murderer, who yet prayed “Oh, pardon mine iniquity, for it is great”? And has no Jewish teacher read you the promise of God by His prophet, “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool”?’

‘I have heard those words,’ said Poppæa. ‘They were quoted to me once by Helen, Queen of Adiabene, who is now living as a proselyte at Jerusalem; and I have been taught that there is but one God.’

‘Oh, pray to Him, then,’ said Pomponia, ‘for He is abundant in pardon.’

‘I know not how to pray,’ said the dying Empress; ‘pray for me.’

If Poppæa knew not, Pomponia knew well; for to her, as a Christian, prayer had become the habit, the attitude of her life. Poppæa had never before heard such words as those. She knew that when she died she would be made a goddess by the Senate, as her infant child had been; yet here by her bedside Pomponia was speaking of her as though she were any other woman, speaking of her deep sinfulness, and not making any difference between her case and that of the commonest slave-girl who might have lived an evil life. And all that she could do was to resign her soul, and suffer it to be borne along unresisting on that stream of prayer.

And yet she felt, even in her misery, some dim sense of consolation, some faint gleam of hope such as she had never felt before. She knew that death was near, and urged Pomponia not to leave her. Pomponia sat by the bedside, holding the weak hand, and doing every act of tenderness, and speaking words of consolation, until the sinful troubled life had ebbed away.

Such a mind as Nero’s had become was incapable of sorrow. He announced, indeed, that he was overwhelmed with grief, and he indulged in a certain amount of hysterical and theatric lamentation, which interfered in no way with his follies or his appetites. A funeral was decreed to Poppæa at the public expense, and Nero at the Rostra pronounced a eulogy—not on her virtues, for there were none on which he could speak, but on her beauty and high fortune, and because she had been the mother of a divine infant. By her own wish—learnt doubtless from the Jews—she was buried, and not burnt as was the Roman custom. Nero had so many spices burnt at her funeral that the learned doubted whether Arabia could furnish more in a single summer. But not one genuine tear was shed upon her grave.