as they thought, be expected to addict himself to vicious
indulgences in some form, the connection with Acte might perhaps be
as little to be dreaded as any. On the whole, they concluded not to
interfere.

Not so, however, with Agrippina. When she came to learn of this new
attachment which her son had formed, she was very much disturbed and
alarmed. Her distress, however, did not arise from any of those
feelings of solicitude which, as a mother, she might have been
expected to feel for the moral purity of her boy, but from fears
that, through the influence and ascendency which such a favorite as
Acte might acquire, she should lose her own power. She knew very
well how absolute and complete the domination of such a favorite
sometimes became, and she trembled at the danger which threatened
her of being supplanted by Acte, and thus losing her control.

Agrippina was very violent and imperious in her temper, and had long
been accustomed to rule those around her with a very high hand; and
now, without properly considering that Nero had passed beyond the
age in which he could be treated as a mere boy, she attacked him at
once with the bitterest reproaches and invectives, and insisted that
his connection with Acte should be immediately abandoned. Nero
resisted her, and stoutly refused to comply with her demands.
Agrippina was fired with indignation and rage. She filled the palace
with her complaints and criminations. She accused Nero of the basest
ingratitude toward her, in repaying the long-continued and faithful
exertions and sacrifices which she had made to promote his
interests, by thus displacing her from his confidence and regard, to
make room for this wretched favorite, and of falseness and
faithlessness to Octavia, in abandoning her, his lawful wife, for
the society of an enfranchised slave. Agrippina was extremely
violent in these denunciations. She scolded, she stormed, she
raved--acting manifestly under the impulse of blind and
uncontrollable passion. Her passion was obviously blind, for the
course to which it impelled her was plainly very far from tending to
accomplish any object which she could be supposed to have in view.

At length, when the first fury of her vexation and anger had spent
itself, she began to reflect, as people generally do when recovering
from a passion, that she was spending her strength in working
mischief to her own cause. This reflection helped to promote the
subsiding of her anger. Her