frightful crimes
had elicited much more moderate condemnation. Claudius, himself no
novice or beginner in horrors, hesitated long after he knew the truth,
and it was the favourite Narcissus who took upon himself to order the
Empress' death. Euodus, his freedman, and a tribune of the guard were
sent to make an end of her. Swiftly they went up to the gardens--the
gardens of the Pincian--and there they found her, beautiful, dark,
dishevelled, stretched upon the marble floor, her mother Lepida
crouching beside her, her mother, who in the bloom of her daughter's
evil life had turned from her, but in her extreme need was overcome
with pity. There knelt Domitia Lepida, urging the terror-mad woman not
to wait the executioner, since life was over and nothing remained but to
lend death the dignity of suicide. But the dishonoured self was empty of
courage, and long-drawn weeping choked her useless lamentations. Then
suddenly the doors were flung open with a crash, and the stern tribune
stood silent in the hall, while the freedman Euodus screamed out curses,
after the way of triumphant slaves. From her mother's hand the lost
Empress took the knife at last and trembling laid it to her breast and
throat, with weakly frantic fingers that could not hurt herself; the
silent tribune killed her with one straight thrust, and when they
brought the news to Claudius sitting at supper, and told him that
Messalina had perished, his face did not change, and he said nothing as
he held out his cup to be filled.

[Illustration: PIAZZA DEL POPOLO]

She died somewhere on the Pincian hill. Romance would choose the spot
exactly where the nunnery of the Sacred Heart stands, at the Trinita de'
Monti, looking down De Sanctis' imposing 'Spanish' steps; and the house
in which the noble girls of modern Rome are sent to school may have
risen upon the foundations of Messalina's last abode. Or it may be that
the place was further west, in the high grounds of the French Academy,
or on the site of the academy itself, at the gates of the public garden,
just where the old stone fountain bubbles and murmurs under the shade of
the thick ilex trees. Most of that land once belonged to Lucullus, the
conqueror of Mithridates, the Academic philosopher, the arch feaster,
and the man who first brought cherries to Italy.

[Illustration: TRINITA DE' MONTI]

The last descendant of Julia, the last sterile monster of the Julian
race, Nero, was buried at the foot of the same