The obsequies were not only disgracefully hurried, but disgracefully mean. Every ceremony which marked a great public funeral was omitted. There were no lictors dressed in black; no _siticines_ with mourning strains; nor _præficæ_, or wailing women; no _lessus_, or funeral dirge. Happily too, as some thought, there were not the customary buffoons, nor the _archimimus_ to imitate the words and actions of the deceased. Though he was the noblest of the noble, no liberated slaves walked before his bier, nor men who wore the waxen images of his long line of ancestors. No relations followed him--men with veiled heads, women with unbound tresses. Many a freedman, even many a slave, had a longer funeral procession than the last of the Claudii. They bore him to his funeral amid storms of rain, which seemed to betoken the wrath of Heaven. The spectators were few, but those few saw by the struggling light of their lanterns that where the rain had washed off the chalk the pale face was marked with patches of black. They saw this, and pointed it out to one another in silence. The last offices were paid in haste by the drenched and half-frightened attendants. The body was laid on the small rough pyre. Julius Densus was there, and Pudens, and Titus, and Flavius Clemens. Nero had not the grace to be present. With averted face Pudens thrust in the torch. The rain had damped the wood, and at first it would not kindle, but they threw oil and resin into it. At last it blazed up; the body was consumed: the glowing embers were quenched with wine. A handful of white ashes in a silver urn, a sad memory in a few loving hearts, were all that remained on earth of the poisoned son of an emperor of Rome. But, when all were gone, a few Christians stole from under the dense shadow of the trees in that lonely spot, and bowed their heads in prayer, and sang a low hymn. And among them was he whose hand of blessing had rested on the young prince’s head, and whose voice of prophecy had foretold his doom.