aval spectacle, to take her out
upon the bay in a barge or galley. He would have the barge so
constructed, he said, that it should go to pieces at sea, making
arrangements beforehand for saving the lives of the others, but
leaving Agrippina to be drowned.

Nero was greatly pleased with this device, and determined at once to
adopt the plan. In order to open the way for carrying it into
effect, he pretended, when the time for the festival drew nigh, that
he desired to be reconciled to his mother, and that he was ready now
to fall in with her wishes and plans. He begged her to forget all
his past unkindness to her, and assuring her that his feelings
toward her were now wholly changed, he lavished upon her expressions
of the tenderest regard. A mother is always very easily deceived by
such protestations on the part of a wayward son, and Agrippina
believed all that Nero said to her. In a word, the reconciliation
seemed to be complete.

At length, when the time for the naval festival drew nigh, Nero, who
was then at Baiae, sent an invitation to his mother to come and join
him in witnessing the spectacle. Agrippina readily consented to
accept the invitation. She was at this time at Antium, the place,
it will be recollected, where Nero was born. She accordingly set
sail from this place in her own galley, and proceeded to the
southward. She landed at one of the villas in the neighborhood of
Baiae. Nero was ready upon the shore to meet her. He received her
with every demonstration of respect and affection. He had provided
quarters for her at Baiae, and there was a splendid barge ready to
convey her thither; the plan being that she should embark on board
this barge, and leave her own galley,--that is the one by which she
had come in from sea,--at anchor at the villa where she landed. The
barge in which Agrippina was thus invited to embark, was the
treacherous trap that Anicetus had contrived for her destruction. It
was, however, to all appearance, a very splendid vessel, being very
richly and beautifully decorated, as if expressly intended to do
honor to the distinguished passenger whom it was designed to convey.

Agrippina, however, did not seem inclined to go in the barge. She
preferred proceeding to Baiae by land. Perhaps, notwithstanding
Nero's apparent friendliness she felt still some misgivings, and
was afraid to trust herself entirely to his power,--or perhaps she
preferred to finish her journey by land only because, in