she looked
steadily upon her assassins.

"Do you come from my son?" said she.

They did not answer.

"If you came to inquire how I am," said she, "tell him that I am
better, and shall soon be entirely well. I can not believe that he
can possibly have sent you to do me any violence or harm."

At this instant one of the assassins struck at the wretched mother
with his club. The arm, however, of the most hardened and
unrelenting monster, usually falters somewhat at the beginning, in
doing such work as this, and the blow gave Agrippina only an
inconsiderable wound. She saw at once, however, that all was
lost--that the bitter moment of death had come,--but instead of
yielding to the emotions of terror and despair which might have been
expected to overwhelm the heart of a woman in such a scene, her
fierce and indomitable spirit aroused itself to new life and vigor
in the terrible emergency. As the assassins approached her with
their swords brandished in the air, preparing to strike her, she
threw the bed-clothes off, so as to uncover her person, and called
upon her murderers to strike her in the womb. "It is there," said
she, "that the stab should be given when a mother is to be murdered
by her son." She was instantly thrust through with a multitude of
wounds in every part of her body, and died weltering in the blood
that flowed out upon the couch on which she lay.

Anicetus and his comrades, when the deed was done, gazed for a
moment on the lifeless body, and then gathering together again the
soldiers that they had left at the gates, they went back to Baiae
with the tidings. The first emotion which Nero experienced, on
hearing that all was over, was that of relief. He soon found,
however, that monster as he was, his conscience was not yet so
stupefied, that he could perpetrate such a deed as this without
bringing out her scourge. As soon as he began to reflect upon what
he had done, his soul was overwhelmed with remorse and horror. He
passed the remainder of the night in dreadful agony, sometimes
sitting silent and motionless--gazing into vacancy, as if his
faculties were bewildered and lost, and then suddenly starting up,
amazed and trembling, and staring wildly about, as if seized with a
sudden frenzy. His wild and ghastly looks, his convulsive
gesticulations, and his incoherent ravings and groans, indicated the
horror that he endured, and were so frightful that his officers and
attendants shrunk away from his pres