Chapter 3

SCENE.--NERO'S _private chamber. Enter_ NERO _hastily and perturbed, followed by_ SENECA, BURRUS, _and_ TIGELLINUS, _his privy-councillors_.

BURRUS. Caesar, still glides the dead Britannicus About the palace, and his memory Your mother, Agrippina, uses: makes Out of his ghost a faction for herself. She grows a public peril; much you owe To her, but more to Rome; from Antium She rages disappointed to and fro. Me for your army you hold answerable, But can no longer if you suffer her To lure the legions from their loyalty. Her creatures whisper to your sentinels, Corrupt your officers, inflame your guards. A sullen silence on the camp is fallen, A word, and it will roar in mutiny.

TIGELLINUS. Everywhere steal her agents and her spies, Gliding through temples, baths, and theatres; Possess all angles, corners, noonday halts, And darknesses; they flit with casual poison Softly; the city secretly is filled With murmurs, lifted eyebrows, and with sighs. The mischief's in the very blood of Rome Unless the sore that feeds it is cut out.

NERO. Why, I myself have visited the fleet With Anicetus: sullen droop the sails Or flap in mutiny against the mast. Burdened with barnacles the untarred keels Drowse on the tide with parching decks unswabbed, And anchors rusting on inglorious ooze. All indolent the vast armada tilts, A leafless resurrection of dead trees. The sailors in a dream do go about Or at the fo'c's'le ominously meet. Should any foe upon the sea-line loom They'll light with ease upon an idle prey. And yet I felt the grandeur of stagnation And the magnificence of idleness.

BURRUS. She hath seduced the breast-plates and the sails.

NERO. [_Distracted._] Here I pronounce her exile.

TIGELLINUS. Whither then?

ANICETUS. To Britain send her. There for Claudius I fought; a melancholy isle, alone, Sundered from all the world; and banned by God With separating, cold, religious wave, And haunted with the ghost of a dead sun Rising as from a grave, or all in blood Returning wounded heavily through mist. Her rotting peoples amid forests cower, Or mad for colour paint their bodies blue. There in eternal drippings of the leaf Or that dead summer of the living fly, And by the eternal sadness of the surf, Ambition cannot live, hope cannot breathe. Even the fieriest spirit there will rust Or gutter like a candle in the rain. To Britain send her.

TIGELLINUS. Never isle remote On the sad water, never desert sand In trembling flame, nor rock-built prison-house Shall tame her: there's the danger, that she lives. While she hath life, it is no matter where, While she hath breath, no other dares to breathe, Not Caesar, even!

NERO. This breath to her I owe.

TIGELLINUS. [_Cautiously and slowly watching_ NERO, _as do the others_.] Caesar, there is a region of exile Whence none hath yet returned--your pardon, sir--

NERO. [_Starts and turns away._] No, no, no! I remember very clear How gently she would wake me long ago.

BURRUS. Then be thy mother's son still and surrender This toy of Rome to her: she bought it you: Now, wearied, give it back!

NERO. Ah, patience, sir! I cannot in one moment gird myself To murder all these kisses, and she hath A vastness in this narrow world so rare, A sweep majestical about the earth-- True, that she hath no ear for verse----

TIGELLINUS. For thine.

NERO. Yet passion, fury, and ambition, these Are primal things in our elaborate age. Ill can we spare them.

BURRUS. Now, 'tis you or she.

NERO. A little time in which to fix my mind. I go to Baiae; for I am not housed Here as I should be: all the palace seems To me a hovel; scarcely can I breathe. I should be roofed with gold, and walled with gold, Should tread on gold; and if I cast mine eyes Over the city, they should view a scene Of spacious avenues and breathing trees, And buildings plunged in odorous foliage. This is a petty city: I have thought It might be well to raze it to the ground And build another and an ampler Rome, More worthy site for this imperial soul. I'll go to Baiae, there to dream this dream.

TIGELLINUS. Might I propose you go not all alone? At times the answering flash from other eyes Can aid the mightiest; and a woman's thought----

NERO. Yes--Yes--Poppaea!

BURRUS. Otho will be jealous.

TIGELLINUS. And is already dangerous; he has joined The Agrippina faction.

NERO. He must be Promoted then to--Lusitania.

TIGELLINUS. Thule were safer--still.

NERO. Here I appoint him Sole governor of Lusitania. To Baiae now--Poppaea--a new Rome!

[_Exit_ NERO.

TIGELLINUS. He hesitates--but I will see Poppaea: She can find means we cannot, and we thus Can use her beauty for our policy.

[_Exeunt_ TIGELLINUS, BURRUS, SENECA, _and_ ANICETUS.