As soon as Julius quitted his brother’s presence he hastened to Nymphidius, and related the ill-success that had attended his remonstrances; and then that bold bad man unfolded a dark plan that involved the destruction of Lucius Claudius. The advantages to be gained by the death of his brother were temptations too mighty to be resisted by a corrupt mind like that of Julius. Hitherto he had possessed the princely fortune, the villas, and farms of Lucius, as if they had been his own. His extravagance had nearly dissipated his own inheritance, as well as the portion of Antonia, his wife, whom he had married for her riches, and not for love. He dreaded, too, that Nero’s jealousy would not spare him if his brother’s conspiracy should be discovered, and agreed finally to the wicked plot Nymphidius proposed. The præfect demanded the hand of his vestal sister as his reward, whose vows he affirmed he would find means to annul; to which Julius readily assented. The infamous Locusta was to provide a poison, whose slow operation would assume the appearance of natural disease, and not only relieve Julius from his fears, but make him the wealthiest subject in Rome. The victim of this dark conspiracy had just despatched Sabinus into Gaul, to Julius Vindex, who was then about to fling off the yoke of Nero, and heroically appear as the champion of virtue and independence, and, like too many other patriots, fall a martyr to the cause of liberty. Lucius hoped soon to call upon the Senate and people to aid the virtuous Gaul, and punish the monster of whom the whole world was weary. In the midst of his brightest hopes, and in the very beginning of a career whose glory might yet have eclipsed that which shed an imperishable light round the heads of his ancestors, he suddenly felt a mortal malady stealing upon him. So insidious were its approaches, that he never suspected its nature, nor even when the hour of death drew nigh imagined that he owed his destruction to the avarice of a brother. One person alone suspected poison, and that was Tigranes, a Parthian slave, who loved Lucius Claudius, and was possessed of some skill in medicine. This man had been absent during the first days of his master’s illness, and he had the hardihood to express his opinion to Julius himself. “In that case the whole household shall be put to the torture, yourself among the rest,” remarked the murderer coldly; hastening himself to his dying brother to acquaint him of the suspicion, and the posthumous revenge he meditated. “I have injured no one,” was the magnanimous reply of the dying Roman; “and even if the fact be as you suspect, I will never punish the innocent with the guilty: God will avenge my death.” He then dictated his last will, and ordered his sister to be sent for, to receive his farewell.