But Narcissus absorbed both the
looks and the attention of the Emperor by the proofs and the narrative
of her crimes, and, getting rid of the Vestal by promising her that the
cause of Messalina should be tried, he hurried Claudius forward, first
to the house of Silius, which abounded with the proofs of his guilt, and
then to the camp of the Praetorians, where swift vengeance was taken on
the whole band of those who had been involved in Messalina's crimes. She
meanwhile, in alternative paroxysms of fury and abject terror, had taken
refuge in the garden of Lucullus, which she had coveted and made her own
by injustice. Claudius, who had returned home, and had recovered some of
his facile equanimity in the pleasures of the table, showed signs of
relenting; but Narcissus knew that delay was death, and on his own
authority sent a tribune and centurions to despatch the Empress. They
found her prostrate on the ground at the feet of her mother Lepida, with
whom in her prosperity she had quarrelled, but who now came to pity and
console her misery, and to urge her to that voluntary death which alone
could save her from imminent and more cruel infamy.
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