And why should Nero trouble himself any more about a death which scarcely caused so much as a ripple on the bitter and stagnant pool of Roman society? On the contrary he and all Rome felt a glow of conscious virtue when, a few days later, an order was given to execute a knight, named Antonius, as a poisoner, and publicly to burn his poisons. When Locusta heard that fact she smiled grimly. But what had she to fear? There was one breast in which the earthquake of excitement, caused by the murder of Britannicus, did not soon subside. Octavia, in the depth of her anguish, had known where to find something of consolation. Not so Agrippina. To her also Nero had offered presents, which she refused with disdainful sullenness. Her soul was full of madness. Was she to be totally defeated by the slight, contemptible son on whom she had built all her hopes? Not without a struggle would she abandon the power which it had been the object of her life to attain, and the fabric of which she had with her own hand shattered to the dust. Suddenly as the Nemesis had come upon her, she would not yet admit herself to be defeated. She was rich; she would be yet richer. She had friends, and she held many a secret interview with them. Octavia might still become in her hands an engine for political purposes, and Agrippina constantly embraced and consoled her. Every tribune and centurion who attended her levées was received with extreme graciousness. She paid her court to all the nobles of high birth and promising ability. She thought that even now it was not too late to create a conspiracy, and put a fitting leader at the head of it. But all her efforts were broken like foam on the rock of the Emperor’s deified autocracy and the unscrupulous wickedness of the favourites by whom he was surrounded. At the suggestion of Otho and Tigellinus, Nero dealt blow after blow at the dignity of his mother. One day she no longer saw the two lictors who attended her litter, and was told that they had been discharged by the Emperor. Soon afterwards she missed the accustomed escort of soldiers who guarded her chambers, and heard with sinking heart that they had been removed. Worst of all, she was suddenly deprived of the body-guard of tall, blue-eyed, fair-haired Germans, to whom she had grown attached, and who were the most splendid outward sign of her imperial station. And, as though all this were not enough, at last the final thunderbolt was launched. She received a message from her son that he had assigned to her, as her residence, the house of his grandmother Antonia. She was dismissed from the Palace in which so many of her years had been spent in order that the courtiers who thronged the audience-hall of the Emperor might have no excuse for paying their respects at the same time to her.