She had divined the reasons which led Otho to prevent her from meeting the Emperor; but she was ambitious of a throne, and, while using neither look nor word which awoke suspicion in her husband’s mind, she smiled to think how vain would be his attempt to set a man’s clumsy diplomacy against a woman’s ready wit. ‘My Otho,’ she had said to him, ‘you are about to entertain the Emperor this evening at a supper such as Rome has not yet seen. The feast which Sestius Gallus gave to Tiberius, the supper which Agrippa the Elder gave to Gaius, and which helped him to a kingdom, were very well in their way; but they were vulgar and incomplete in comparison with that of which your guests will partake to-night.’ ‘I know it, Poppæa,’ he said; ‘and though my own taste sets the standard in Rome, I know how much the arrangements of my banquet will owe to the suggestions of my beautiful wife.’ ‘And ought not the wife, whom you are pleased to call beautiful, at least to welcome into the house our imperial guest? Will it not be a marked rudeness if the matron of the house has no word wherewith to greet the Cæsar as he steps across her threshold? Will he be content with the croaking “_Salve, Cæsar!_” of the parrot whom you have hung in his gilded cage at the entrance of the atrium?’ ‘Poppæa is lovely,’ said Otho, ‘and Nero is--what he is. Would you endanger the life of the last of the Salvii, merely for the pleasure of letting a short-sighted youth, perhaps a would-be lover, stare at you a little more closely?’ A pout settled on the delicate lips of Poppæa, as she turned away with the remark: ‘I thought, Otho, that I had been to you too faithful a bride to find in you an unreasonable husband. Is there any lady in Rome except myself who would be deemed unworthy to see the Emperor when he sups in her house? Have I deserved that you should cast this slur upon me as though I--I, whose piety is known to all the Romans--were a Julia or an Agr-- I mean, a Messalina?’ Otho tried to bring back her lips to their usual smile, but he did not wish to give way unless he were absolutely obliged to do so. He said: ‘You must not adopt these tragic tones, my sweet Poppæa. This is but a bachelor’s party. You shall meet Nero some day in this house when all the noblest matrons of Rome are with you to sanction your presence, and you shall outshine them all. But there are guests coming to-night whom I should not care for Poppæa to greet, though I have asked them as companions of Nero. Surely you would not demean yourself by speaking to a Vatinius or a Paris, to say nothing of a Tigellinus or a Sagitta.’ ‘I need not see or speak to any of the others, Otho,’ said Poppæa; ‘but surely I have a right to ask that when the slave sees the gilded letica with its purple awnings I may for one moment advance across the hall, and tell Nero that Poppæa Sabina greets the friend of her lord, and thanks him for honouring their poor house with his august presence.’