e felt in his powers gave
him an air of great self-possession and composure, the impression
which he made was very favorable. The people were in fact
predisposed to be pleased with and to applaud the efforts of a young
orator so illustrious in rank and station--and the ability which he
displayed, although he was so young, was such as to justify,
unquestionably, in some degree, the honors that they paid him.

Agrippina, therefore, supposing that her son was now far enough
advanced in public consideration to make it in some degree certain
that he would be the emperor's successor, was ready at any time for
her husband to die. His sickness therefore filled her mind with
excitement and hope. There was another motive too, besides her
ambitious desires for the advancement of her son, that made her
desirous that Claudius should not live. She had been now for several
months somewhat solicitous and anxious about her own safety. Her
influence over Claudius, which was at first so absolute and supreme,
had afterward greatly declined, and within a few months she had
begun to fear that she might be losing it entirely. In fact she had
some reason for believing that Claudius regarded her with concealed
hostility and hate, and was secretly revolving plans for deposing
both her and her son from the high ascendency to which they had
raised themselves, and for bringing back his own son to his proper
prominence, in Nero's place. Agrippina, too, in the midst of her
ambitious projects and plans, led a life of secret vice and crime,
and feeling guilty and self-condemned, every trivial indication of
danger excited her fears. Some one informed her that Claudius one
day when speaking of a woman who had been convicted of crime, said
that it had always been _his_ misfortune to have profligate wives,
but that he always brought them in the end to the punishment that
they deserved. Agrippina was greatly terrified at this report. She
considered it a warning that Claudius was meditating some fatal
proceedings in respect to her.

Agrippina observed, too, as she thought, various indications that
Claudius was beginning to repent of having adopted Nero and thus
displaced his own son from the line of inheritance; and that he was
secretly intending to restore Britannicus to his true position. He
treated the boy with greater and greater attention every day, and at
one time, after having been conversing with him and expressing an
unusual interest in his healt