Agrippina was very violent and imperious in her temper, and had long been accustomed to rule those around her with a very high hand; and now, without properly considering that Nero had passed beyond the age in which he could be treated as a mere boy, she attacked him at once with the bitterest reproaches and invectives, and insisted that his connection with Acte should be immediately abandoned. Nero resisted her, and stoutly refused to comply with her demands. Agrippina was fired with indignation and rage. She filled the palace with her complaints and criminations. She accused Nero of the basest ingratitude toward her, in repaying the long-continued and faithful exertions and sacrifices which she had made to promote his interests, by thus displacing her from his confidence and regard, to make room for this wretched favorite, and of falseness and faithlessness to Octavia, in abandoning her, his lawful wife, for the society of an enfranchised slave. Agrippina was extremely violent in these denunciations. She scolded, she stormed, she raved--acting manifestly under the impulse of blind and uncontrollable passion. Her passion was obviously blind, for the course to which it impelled her was plainly very far from tending to accomplish any object which she could be supposed to have in view. At length, when the first fury of her vexation and anger had spent itself, she began to reflect, as people generally do when recovering from a passion, that she was spending her strength in working mischief to her own cause. This reflection helped to promote the subsiding of her anger. Her loud denunciations gradually died away, and were succeeded by mutterings and murmurings. At length she became silent altogether, and after an interval of reflection, she concluded no longer to give way to her clamorous and useless anger, but calmly to consider what it was best to _do_.