the Forum.”
“Think you so! Why so? I have amused the people so well. Good Phaon, hire me a swift galley, and I will take refuge with Tiridates. I restored to him the crown of Armenia. He will not be ungrateful.”
“My lord, it will not be possible for you to leave Italy.”
“Then I will retire to a farm. I will grow cabbages and turnips. The god Tiberius was fond of turnips. O Divine Powers that rule the fate of men! shall I ever eat turnips again? Phaon, hide me for a season. Men’s minds are changeable. They are heated now. They will cool to-morrow. They cannot kill such a superlative artist as myself.”
“I have a villa between the Salarian and the Nomentane Roads. If it please you to go thither – ”
“At once. I think I hear horse-hoofs. O Phaon, save me!”
Sporus came up, offering an old moth-eaten cloak. The wardrobe had been plundered, only the refuse had been abandoned.
A voice was heard pealing through the empty corridors: “Horses! horses at the door!”
“Who calls so loud? Silence him. He will betray us!” said Nero. “Hah! It is Epaphroditus.”
At the entrance, chained to a cumbrous log, was the Greek, Epaphroditus, formerly a pampered favorite. But two days previously he had ventured to correct a false quantity in some verses by his master, and Nero, in a burst of resentment and mortified vanity, had ordered him to be fastened to a beam as doorkeeper to the Servilian Palace.
“The horses are here,” shouted the freedman. “May it please my lord to mount. Sporus and the slaves can run afoot.”
Nero unwound the kerchief from his hand and wrapped it about his throat, drew the broad-brimmed hat over his head, enveloped himself in the blanket cloak, and shuffled in his slippers to the door.
The chained Greek at once cried out: “Master! my chain has become entangled and is so knotted that I cannot stir. I have been thus since noon, and none have regarded me. I pray thee, let me go.”
“Thou fool! cease hallooing!” retorted Nero angrily. “Dost think I carry about with me the key of thy shackles?” Then to those who followed, “Smite him on the mouth and silence him, or he will call attention to me.”
“The gods smite thee!” yelled the scribe, striving to reach an upright posture, but falling again, owing to the tangle in the links. “May they blight thee as they have stricken Livia’s laurel!”3
Mounted on an old gray horse, Nero rode to the Ælian Bridge, where stands now that of St. Angelo, crossed it and began to traverse the Campus Martius.
Electric flashes quivered across the sky. Then again an earthquake made the city rock as if drunk; the buildings were rent, and masses of cornice fell down.
A glare of white lightning illumined the whole field and lighted up the mausoleum of Augustus, and the blank faces of such men as were abroad.
The horse trembled and refused to move. It was some time before the alarm of the brute could be allayed, and it could be coaxed to go forward and begin the ascent of the Quirinal. The advance was slow; and Nero’s fears became greater as the road approached the Prætorian Camp, and he expected recognition by the sentinels. Yet in the midst of his fear wild flashes of hope shot, and he said to Phaon:
“What think you, if I were to enter the camp? Surely the Prætorians would rally about me, and I might dissolve the Senate.”
“Sire, they have destroyed your images, and have proclaimed Galba. They would take off your head and set it on a pike.”
Nero uttered a groan, and kicked the flanks of his steed. At that moment a passer-by saluted him.
“By the Immortals! I am recognized.”
“We have but to go a little further.”
“Phaon, what if the Senate declare me an enemy of the State?”
“Then you will fare in the customary manner.”
“How is that?”
The prince put his trembling hand to his brow and in his agitation knocked off his hat.
The freedman picked it up.
“The customary manner, sire! your neck will be put in the cleft of a forked stick and you will be beaten, lashed, kicked to death. Better take the sword and fall on it.”
“Oh, Phaon! not yet! I cannot endure pain. I have a spring nail now – and it hurts! it hurts!”
“Ride on, my lord; at the cypress hedge we will turn our horses loose, and by a path through the fields reach my villa.”
Half an hour after Nero had left the Servilian palace, where now stands the Lateran, Lamia arrived followed by two servants. He found the secretary in a heap at the door, vainly writhing in his knotted chains. Lamia at once asked him about the prince, whether he was there.
“I will both answer and show you whither he is fled,” said Epaphroditus, “if you will release me. Otherwise my tongue is tied like my limbs.”
“Is he here?”
“Nay, he has been here, but is gone. Whither I alone can say. The price of the information is release.”
“Tell me where I can find tools.”
Epaphroditus gave the required information and Lamia despatched a servant to bring hammer and chisel. They were speedily produced; but some time was taken up in cutting through the links.
This, however, was finally effected, and the secretary gathered up a handful of the broken chain and clenched it in his fist.
“Now I will lead the way,” said he, stretching himself.
The wretched, fallen emperor had in the meanwhile scrambled through hedges and waded through a marsh, and had at last found a temporary shelter in a garden tool-house of the villa. Phaon feared to introduce him into his house.
Wearied out, he cast himself on a sort of bier on which the gardeners carried citron trees to and from the conservatory. The cloak had fallen from him and lay on the soil.
His feet were muddy and bleeding. He had tried to eat some oat-cake that had been offered him, but was unable to swallow.
He continued to be teased with, and to pick or bite at his spring nails.
“I hear steps!” he cried. “They will kill me!”
“Sire, play the man.”
Phaon offered him a couple of poniards.
Nero put the point of one to his breast, shrunk and threw it away.
“It is too blunt, it will not enter,” he said.
He tried the other and dropped it.
“It is over sharp. It cuts,” he said.
At that moment the door opened and Lamia and Epaphroditus entered.
Nero cried out and covered his face:
“Sporus! Phaon! one or both! kill yourselves and show me how to do it.”
“To do it!” said Lamia sternly. “That is not difficult. Do you need a sword? Here is one – the sword of Corbulo.”
He extended the weapon to the prince, who accepted it with tremulous hand, looking at Lamia with glassy eyes.
“Oh! a moment! I feel sick.”
Then Phaon said: “Sire – at once!”
Then Nero, with all power going out of his fingers, pointed the blade to his throat.
“I cannot,” he gasped, “my hand is numb.”
Immediately, Epaphroditus with his hand full of chain, brought the weighted fist against the haft, and drove the sword into the coward’s throat.
He sank back on the bier.
Then Lamia stooped, gathered up the moth-eaten cloak, and threw it over the