The malcontents of Rome would be sure to agitate in favour of Britannicus unless the succession was secured for Nero before the death of Claudius was known. The art with which Agrippina averted this danger may excite our admiration of her virility and astuteness, but must inevitably lessen our appreciation of her sensibility. She announced that Claudius was dangerously ill, and called an assembly of the Senate. Conscious that the servants of a palace commonly draw their pay from some one without, she put guards at every approach to the chamber of the dead man, and devised and carried out a tragi-comedy of the most extraordinary character. The clothes were drawn over the lifeless body, bandages and poultices were ostentatiously applied to it by her servants, and even the mimes, who had been wont to dance and ring their bells and crack their jokes before the Emperor, were brought in to perpetrate their follies in the chamber of death. In a neighbouring room Agrippina joined her conjugal sobs with the laments of the youthful Britannicus. We are asked to believe, and we have little difficulty in believing, that while she clung in tears to the weeping youth, she was merely, with cold calculation, preventing him from leaving the palace, lest he should fall in the way of the Guards, or some ambitious partisan, and be proclaimed Emperor. By noon the preparations of her agents were completed. The gates of the palace were thrown open, and Nero was sent out, under the care of his military tutor Burrus, the commander of the Guards. A few voices were heard to mutter the name of Britannicus, but the cry was feeble, and the response insignificant. The Guards were long accustomed to see the superiority of Nero over the sickly young prince, and their support was secured by a liberal promise of money. They conducted Nero to the Senate, and bade that helpless body accept him. The same evening a courier from Agrippina brought word to Sinuessa that Nero was Emperor. Narcissus had lost, and his figure passes from the scene--with the inevitable rumour that he was imprisoned or poisoned by Agrippina.