White with indignation, Agrippina interrupted: “What hast thou done that no one dares to visit me? Thou hast made friendship for Agrippina a crime. Sosius and Sosia were persecuted because they loved me. O Jupiter and ye celestial gods! what crime did the pure Claudia commit? Domitius Afer, an unknown lawyer, with bribed witnesses, tried to prove her an adulteress and a worker in witchcraft against thee. What reason didst thou give me when I pleaded for the life of that chaste and honest matron? Thy words were, ‘She shall die.’ O Tiberius, her greatest crime was her friendship for me! What has Sabinus done? He loved my husband; he loved me and my children. Of a truth, thou hast turned every friend from me. Thou wouldst like my children to hate me. Even my slaves are paid by some one to spy and lie against me. Do I look at thee through a veil of hate? Who holds that veil?” “Thou dost not reason calmly,” he protested. “Afflicted as I have been, does it not surprise thee that I can reason at all?” she bitterly asked. “Thou placest the blame for thy troubles on human agencies. What the gods have sent upon thee thou shouldst bear with calmness,” was the hypocritical reply of the tyrant. “Wouldst thou hate me less if I should respect thee more?” she asked. “Is it thy wish that I should grovel and fawn before thee, and thus defile the blood of the Julian family,--blood the purest and most illustrious in Rome?” “I have asked of thee no favors. I bestow them,” said Tiberius, contemptuously. “Caligula shall come to the palace,” he continued relentlessly. Then he added roughly, “Feed less, O Agrippina, on thy daily bread of discontent, which is filled with worms of hate, and thou wilt be happier.” During this conversation Tiberius paced up and down upon the tessellated floor of the atrium, before the altar that held the family gods of Germanicus. He twitched his fingers, and from time to time nervously adjusted the folds of his toga. Agrippina spoke without anger, and with a certain slow emphasis that made her words pierce the pride and dignity of the emperor. Her mind was so overwhelmed by the flood of things she wished to say that at first she could not think clearly. In answer to his remarks about her food for reflection, she said: “I may eat of that bread, O Tiberius; but who serves it? Upon my bosom I have carried an invisible flower that has weighed upon me like a stone. The noxious odors that I have breathed in these past years have so affected my nature that thou now seest a hideous figure. Mine eyes have so changed that they have become spies upon my inner thoughts. Upon my lips can now be read bitter words that are not spoken. The light-hearted maid who married Germanicus never knew a care. What happened? Her loving brothers, Lucius and Caius, were murdered. By whose hands? Her mother was sent to Pandataria and starved to death. By whose hands? Who was it who murdered her brother Agrippa?” “Cease thy invective,” ordered Tiberius.