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314 DARKNESS AND DAWN
CHAPTER XXXVII
VICTOR OVER THE PUBLIC SERVITUDE
'
Pallidumque visa
Matris lampade respicis Neronem.'
STAT. Sylv. II. vii. 118.
'
Prima est haec ultio, quod se
Judice nemo nocens absolvitur.'
Juv. Sat. xiii. 2.
THEKE is a marvellous force of illumination in a great crime,
but it is the lurid illumination of the lightning-flash, revealing
to the lost Alpine wanderer the precipices which yawn on
every side of him. While the murder was yet to do, Nero
could talk of it lightly and eagerly among the accomplices
who were in the secret. To the irresponsible Emperor of the
world it did not seem so great a matter to order the murder
of a mother. But when the deed was done, when he had got
back to his Baian villa, when the pale face flecked with
crimson bloodstains came hauntingly back upon his memory,
a horror of great darkness fell
upon him. Then first he realised
the atrocious magnitude of his crime, and every moment
there rang in his ears a damning accusation. The very birds
of the air seemed to flit
away from '
him, twittering Matricide !
'
matricide !
He drank more Falernian from the glittering
table, on which yet lay the remains of the banquet, but it
seemed as if all his senses were too preternaturally acute
with horror to be dulled by wine. He lay down to sleep,
but strange sounds seemed to be creeping through the dead
stillness of the night, which made him shudder with alarm.
If he closed his eyes, there flashed at once upon them the
pale face, the firm-set lips, the splashes of blood. The dead
eyes of his mother seemed to open upon him with a gleam of
vengeance. Till that night he had never known what it was
to dream. He started up with a shriek and summoned his