and distress, but she
could not summon resolution to receive the poniard. In the midst of
this scene the band of soldiers appeared, entering the garden. The
mother pressed the poniard upon her daughter, saying, "Now is the
time." Messalina took the weapon, and pointed it toward her breast,
but had not firmness enough to strike it home. The officer
approached her at the head of his men, with his sword drawn in his
hand. Messalina, still irresolute, made a feeble and ineffectual
effort to give herself a wound, but failed of inflicting it; and
then the officer who had by this time advanced to the spot where
she was standing, put an end to her dreadful mental struggles by
cutting her down and killing her at a single blow.

When tidings were brought back to Narcissus that his commands had
been obeyed, he went again to the presence of Claudius, and reported
to him simply that Messalina was no more. He made no explanations,
and the emperor asked for none; but went on with his supper as if
nothing had occurred, and never afterward expressed any curiosity or
interest in respect to Messalina's fate.

As soon as the excitement produced by these transactions had in some
degree subsided, various plans and intrigues were commenced for
providing the emperor with another wife. There were many competitors
for the station, all of whom were eager to occupy it; for, though
Claudius was old, imbecile, and ugly, still he was the emperor; and
all those ladies of his court who thought that they had any prospect
of success, aspired to the possession of his hand, as the summit of
earthly ambition. Among the rest, Agrippina appeared. She was
Claudius's niece. This relationship was in one respect a bar to her
success, since the laws prohibited marriage within that degree of
consanguinity. In another respect, however, the relationship was
greatly in Agrippina's favor, for under the plea of it she had
constant access to the emperor, and was extremely assiduous in her
attentions to him. She succeeded, at length, in inspiring him with
some sentiment of love, and he determined to make her his wife. The
Senate were easily induced to alter the laws in order to enable him
to do this, and Claudius and Agrippina were married.

Claudius not only thus made the mother of our hero his wife, but he
adopted her son as his son and heir--changing, at the same time, the
name of the boy. In place of his former plebeian appellation of
Ahenobarbus, he gave him now