But Agrippina was lying in her chamber, shivering, agitated, with aching body and despairing soul. The undaunted woman had betrayed to her slaves and household no sign that she was aware of what had been intended. She only told them that her galley had been shipwrecked, and her life marvellously preserved. She expressed her deep regret at the loss of her friends Acerronia and Crepereius, and ordered the will of the former to be produced, and all her effects sealed. Not till then did she withdraw into privacy, to meditate on what she should do. All was too plain now! She understood that sugared letter which had summoned her from Antium! She understood why her son had sailed to Cape Misenum to meet her; why her own galley had been purposely run into; why the gorgeous state-barge had been pressed upon her acceptance! She saw through the exquisite banquet, the hypocritical caresses, the murder so deliberately and diabolically planned.... Alas! alas! Revenge, the appeal to force, was out of the question. She was ill and miserable, and felt drained of all her energies. The crowd buzzed and shouted outside; but she gauged too well their cowardly and vacillating nature to rely on any protection from them. She knew that at the sight of a dozen soldiers they would be scattered like the chaff. And who would strike a blow for her? Not the mob, for she was universally hated; not the nobles or the Senate, for they loved her not, and were in any case too selfish, too servile, and too much steeped in dissolute luxury to lift a hand on her behalf. Would the Prætorians rise at her bidding? It was more than doubtful, and if they would, she was at Bauli and they at Rome. But one thistledown of hope remained to bear the weight of her ruined fortunes. Was it possible that, at the last moment, her son would relent? Those farewell embraces seemed to express something genuine. Perhaps when he found that he had, in spite of himself, escaped the guilt of actual matricide, he might come to a better mind. The gods had offered him one more opportunity for repentance: would he embrace it? Yes; she came to the decision that her best course was to feign ignorance of the design of which she had been the victim, and to trust to the reawakenment of filial affection in Nero’s mind. She summoned to her presence her freedman Lucius Agerinus. ‘Go to the Emperor,’ she said, ‘and tell him that, by the merciful protection of the gods, his mother has been saved from a terrible disaster. Anxious as he must naturally be about my safety, ask him not to cherish any solicitude, but to postpone for the present the visit which he will wish to pay me. I am greatly in need of rest.’