‘Does not Cæsar know what gives her this audacity?’ asked Tigellinus, in a low tone. ‘No,’ answered Nero; ‘except it be that she has ruled me from a child.’ ‘It is,’ said the adventurer, ‘because Pallas abets her, and because--’ He paused. ‘Pallas? Who is Pallas?’ said the Emperor. ‘An ex-slave--nothing more. I am not afraid of him. I will dismiss him at once, and if he gives the least trouble, I will threaten him with an inquisition into his account. He shall go and end his Pallas-ship.[14] But what else were you going to say?’ ‘Agrippina domineers,’ he whispered in the Emperor’s ear, ‘because Britannicus is alive.’ ‘Britannicus?’ answered Nero. He said no more, but his brow became dark as night. CHAPTER X _PRINCE BRITANNICUS._ ‘We were, fair queen, Two lads that thought there was no more behind, But such a day to-morrow as to-day, And to be boy eternal.’ SHAKESPEARE, _The Winter’s Tale_, i. 2. There were few youths in Rome more deserving of pity than the son of Claudius. Britannicus saw himself not only superseded, but deliberately neglected and thrust into the background. The intrigues of his stepmother had succeeded, and he, the true heir to the Empire, was a cipher in the Palace of the Cæsars. The suite of apartments assigned to his use and that of his immediate attendants was in one of the least frequented parts of the Palace. He often heard from the banquet hall and reception rooms, as he passed by them unnoticed, the sounds of revelry, in which he was only allowed on rare occasions to participate. Agrippina, in her varying moods, treated him sometimes with studied coolness and insulting patronage, sometimes with a sort of burning and maudlin affection, as though she were touched by the furies of remorse. The latter mood was more intolerable to him than the former. Sometimes, when she strained him to her steely heart, he felt as if he could have thrust her from him with loathing, and he made his relations with her more difficult because he was too little of an actor to conceal his dislike. Nero usually met him with sneering banter, but he, too, at times, seemed as though he would like to be treated by him with at least the semblance of brotherly cordiality. He found his chief comfort in the society of Octavia. She was, nominally, the Empress, and Nero, though he shunned her to the utmost of his power, had not yet dared to rob her of the dignities which surrounded her exalted rank. It was in the company of his sister that Britannicus spent his happiest hours. Octavia, as often as she dared, invited him to be present on festive occasions, and in her apartments he could find refuge for a time from the most detested of the spies with whom his stepmother had surrounded him from his early boyhood.