Agrippina thought that Nature had never looked lovelier as she glided over the flashing waves, and her stalwart rowers in gay liveries, ‘Bending to their oars with splash and strain, Made white with foam the green and purple sea.’ They had hardly rounded Cape Misenum when they met the imperial yacht in which Nero had sailed to meet her. He came on board her galley, warmly embraced her, and accompanied her to the landing-stage of her villa at Bauli, where he bade her farewell, saying that they would meet again in the evening. ‘And look, mother,’ he said, ‘I have provided that you shall be conducted to Baiæ with proper splendour.’ He pointed to a yacht anchored under the trees of her villa, manned with the imperial marines, and superb with fluttering pennons and decorations of gilding and vermilion. It was more splendid than any to which she had been accustomed in the days when, as the sole Augusta and as all-powerful with Claudius, she wielded the resources of the Empire. This yacht, he told her, was to be rowed in front of her Liburnian, and to announce her arrival. There it lay, making a lovely show, and casting its bright broken reflection on the dancing sunlit waters. She was delighted, for she loved magnificence, both for its own sake and for the impression which it makes on the multitude; and she took this as an omen that Nero would restore to her the body-guard of Germans and the escort of Prætorians the withdrawal of which had cut her most deeply to the heart. As Agrippina rested after her voyage, she prepared to array herself in her richest and most jewelled robes. She was full of bright anticipations, and thought that now the tortures of the last five years were at an end. The whole world had turned for her to thorns; would some new rose-bud now unfold itself among them? Hardly! It was the custom of ladies on the first day of the Quinquatrus to consult astrologers and fortune-tellers, and the answers of those whom Agrippina consulted that day were far from encouraging. And a disagreeable incident occurred during the morning. While she was being dressed, the message was brought her that, in the concourse of vessels which had attended the Emperor, one of them had accidentally crashed into her own galley, and so broken its sides that it was temporarily unfit for service; happily, however, she could now sail on board the bright vessel which had been sent to wait upon her. Little did the unhappy woman know that all this had been pre-arranged, and that the chief reason why Nero had sailed to meet her was in order to make the disabling of her galley wear the aspect of a colourable accident!