_A room in the Palace. Enter NERO and POPPÆA._
_NERO._
All for thy sake was planned, and now my pleasure
In scheming thine is fled; for what is Baiæ,
And what Minerva’s feast, blue skies and seas,
Or games, or mirth, or wine, or the soft season,
If thou deny me? Prithee say thou’lt come.
_POPPÆA._
Nay, I’ll not go.
_Ner._ Thou wilt not?
_Pop._ Nay, I cannot.
_Ner._ Cannot to Cæsar?
_Pop._ Prove me then thou’rt Cæsar,
And not a ward.
_Ner._ A ward!
_Pop._ I said a ward.
May I not see thee vexed? ’Tis what men whisper,
Who dare not vex thee. Well, thy mother’s child,
So much that at her beck thou forfeitest 2491
Empire and liberty.
_Ner._ Wouldst thou enrage me!
What dost thou mean, Poppæa?
_Pop._ Deny not that:
If ’tis not that hinders our marriage, then
The case, I fear, blackens. I, who can smile
At that, must weep another cause. I’ll think
Thou’rt tired of me.
_Ner._ Now by what sign?
_Pop._ Maybe
Thou hast seen a better beauty, and repented
The promise given to me.
_Ner._ O treason, treason!
_Pop._ Thinkest my blood unworthy of alliance 2500
With thine—tho’, truth, my ancestors have triumphed.
_Ner._ Who dares that lie shall bleed.
_Pop._ Or that our bed
Is not like to be blest.
_Ner._ The fruitful gods
With all their oracles avert the omen.
_Pop._ Or that I urge my marriage for advancement;
And thou, doubting my love, pressest denial
To proof of faith.
_Ner._ Ay, that is it; thou’st hit it.
_Pop._ Or that I, once thy wife, would cross thy mother,
Divulge her crimes, the hate the senate bear her,
And last, though that’s well known, how she hates thee.
_Ner._ Speak of this once for all, then let the jest
Be dead.
_Pop._ Nay, ’tis no jest, for Agrippina 2512
Will never love a daughter who loves thee.
Restore me to my husband. I were happier
In any place, howe’er remote from Rome,
Where thy disgrace and wrongs can but be spoken,
Not seen and felt as here. See why I go.
_Ner._ Poppæa, since I have never hid from thee
My quarrel with my mother, thou mayst know
It draws to end.
_Pop._ Oh, is’t the turn for kindness? 2520
Hath she been kind again? Why, ’tis deception.
When her plot failed she cast it off, and now
Exults: ’tis her fresh confidence seems kind.
_Ner._ ’Twas not her plot. Or else I’d rather think
She put the snare to catch my foolish aunt,
Who blindly took the bait.
_Pop._ Then she pretended
Treason, that she might better hurt her sister:
And yet can win thy trust!
_Ner._ Nay, heaven forbid;
I trust her not.
_Pop._ She hates me.
_Ner._ Nay, her kinship
Is jealous for Octavia; but...
_Pop._ Ah, true! 2530
To kill one’s husband, plot against one’s son,
Should leave unsatisfied some tender feelings
To spend upon a step-child. Why, she knows
Those arts which manage you would not gull me,
A woman not her child. Her whole design
Is bent to thwart our marriage; and she will.
I know it.
_Ner._ I swear that were this proved against her,
Came it to a question ’twixt herself and thee,
Which to take, which to lose, then not a moment
Would I delay: the blow I have often sworn 2540
To strike should fall.
_Enter Messenger._
_MESSENGER._