The men around
sprang forward, ready to do their master's bidding in a less clumsy and
more certain way. But the Empress, with one of her attendants, sprang
from the treacherous vessel into the less treacherous waves. And there,
this faithful friend of hers, with a woman's wit and a woman's devotion,
drew on her own head the blows and stabs of the murderers above, by
crying, as if in drowning, "Save me, I am Nero's mother!" Uttering those
words of self-devotion, she was killed by the murderers above, while the
Empress, in safer silence, buoyed up by fragments of the wreck, floated
to the shore.

Nero had failed thus in secret crime, and yet he knew that he could not
stop here. And the next day after his mother's deliverance, he sent a
soldier to her palace, with a guard; and there, where she was deserted
even by her last attendant, without pretence of secrecy, they put to
death the daughter and the mother of a Caesar. And Nero only waits to
look with a laugh upon the beauty of the corpse, before he returns to
resume his government at Rome.

That moment was the culminating moment of the ancient civilization. It
is complete in its centralizing power; it is complete in its external
beauty; it is complete in its crime. Beautiful as Eden to the eye, with
luxury, with comfort, with easy indolence to all; but dust and ashes
beneath the surface! It is corrupted at the head! It is corrupted at
the heart! There is nothing firm!

This is the moment which I take for our little picture. At this very
moment there is announced the first germ of the new civilization. In the
very midst of this falsehood, there sounds one voice of truth; in the
very arms of this giant, there plays the baby boy who is to cleave him
to the ground. This Nero slowly returns to the city. He meets the
congratulations of a senate, which thank him and the gods that he has
murdered his own mother. With the agony of an undying conscience
torturing him, he strives to avert care by amusement. He hopes to turn
the mob from despising him by the grandeur of their public
entertainments. He enlarges for them the circus. He calls unheard-of
beasts to be baited and killed for their enjoyment. The finest actors
rant, the sweetest musicians sing, that Nero may forget his mother, and
that his people may forget him.

At that period, the statesmen who direct the machinery of affairs inform
him that his personal attention is required one morning for a state
trial, to be ar