Nero saw but little of Agrippina. She spent much of her time at one or other of her numerous villas, and rarely occupied the palace of Antonia at Rome. Yet he felt sure that during her sullen isolation she had never abandoned her designs. She might seem to be living in retirement, busy with the improvement of her gardens, or amusing herself with her talking starlings and nightingales; but he knew her too well to imagine that she acquiesced in a defeat which she might yet retrieve. She was but forty-two years old, and in past days she had shown that she knew how to wait. It was known that she was writing her own memoirs, and that their scandalous pages abounded in accusations against others, so dark as to render men more credulous of the worst accusations which were launched against herself. How could Nero tell what might be passing between her and Octavia when they exchanged visits? His timid and conscience-stricken nature often imagined that she might be intriguing with Faustus Sulla or Rubellius Plautus, both of whom, like himself, were scions of the imperial family of the Cæsars. He saw in her the one fatal obstacle to the fulfilment of his desires. And she, in those grim years of terror, knew well that Poppæa was no gentle girl like Acte, but would strive to trample on her rivals as Agrippina herself had done in former years. The struggle against Poppæa and her beauty and her ambition would be a struggle of life and death. And, indeed, the bitterness of death was almost past, for her son stooped to the most ignoble methods for rendering her life miserable, and humiliating her even to the dust. At Rome he set on his emissaries to harass her with lawsuits; and, stooping to yet more vulgar baseness, he paid the lowest of the populace to annoy her with coarse jests and infamous reproaches, which they shouted at her from boat or roadside, when she was resting at her country houses. An attempt was made to poison her at a banquet given by Otho; but Agrippina was wary and abstemious. She had watchful slaves and freedmen near her person, and the attempt failed. Nero persuaded himself that his mother was watching him like a tiger-cat in act to spring. It was not only Poppæa who inflamed his hatred. Tigellinus also had his own designs. He suggested that Otho should first be got out of the way, and then that the death of Agrippina should leave the path open for Nero’s union with the siren who had mastered his soul. Octavia, without Agrippina to help her, was hardly considered in the light of an obstacle. She could be swept aside with ease. The first step was soon taken. Otho was sent as governor to Lusitania. So long as he was there he could not stand in Nero’s way. The exile cherished his love for Poppæa to the last; and during his brief spell of empire he induced the Senate to honour her with statues. But he never saw her more.