on a mean bed, which was covered with a
tattered coverlet, and asked for some refreshment.

All they could offer him was a little coarse bread, so black that the
sight of it sickened his dainty taste, and some warm and foul water,
which thirst forced him to drink. His friends meanwhile were in little
less desperation than himself. They saw that no hope was left and that
his place of concealment would soon be known, and entreated him to avoid
a disgraceful death by taking his own life.

Nero promised to do so, but still sought reasons for delay. His funeral
must be prepared for, he said, and bade them to dig a grave, to prepare
wood for a funeral pile, and bring marble to cover his remains.
Meanwhile he piteously bewailed his unhappy lot; sighed and shed tears
copiously; and said, with a last impulse of vanity, "What a musician the
world will lose!"

While he thus in cowardly procrastination delayed the inevitable end, a
messenger, whom Phaon had ordered to bring news from Rome, arrived with
papers. These Nero eagerly seized and read. He found himself dethroned,
declared a public enemy, and condemned to suffer death with the rigor of
ancient usage. Such was the decree of the senate, which hitherto had
been his subservient slave.

"Ancient usage?" he asked. "What do they mean? What kind of death is
that?"

"It is this," they told him. "Every traitor, by the law of the old
republic, with his head fastened between two stakes, and his body
stripped naked, was slowly flogged to death by the lictors' rods."

Dread of this terrible and ignominious punishment roused the trembling
wretch to some semblance of courage. He produced two daggers, which he
had brought with him, and tried their points. Then he replaced them in
their scabbards, saying, "The fatal moment is not yet come."

Turning to Sporus, he said, "Sing the melancholy dirge, and offer the
last obsequies to your friend." Then, rolling his eyes wildly around, he
exclaimed, "Why will not some one of you kill himself, and teach me how
to die?"

He paused a moment. No one seemed inclined to adopt his suggestion. A
flood of tears burst from his eyes. Starting up, he cried, in a tone of
wild despair, "Nero, this is infamy; you linger in disgrace; this is no
time for dejected passions; this moment calls for manly fortitude."

These words were hardly spoken when the sound of horses was heard
advancing rapidly towards the house. Theatrical to the end, he repeated
a l