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560 DAKKNESS AND DAWN
CHAPTER LXV
IN THE CLUTCH OF NEMESIS
' I'll find him out,
Or drag him by the curls to a foul death,
Cursed as his life.'
MILTON, Comus.
'
And so I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place
of the holy
. . . : this also is vanity.' Eccles. viii. 10.
IT was on the evening of June 8 that Nymphidius Sabinus
betrayed Nero, and, by the forged promise of an enormous
donative, which was never paid, induced the Praetorians to
embrace the cause of Galba. A worthless master makes
worthless slaves. This man, whom Nero had lifted out of
the dust as a reward for his crimes, sold his bad benefactor
without a blush.
Nero heard the grim news before he retired to rest in the
evening, and he was well aware that the morrow must decide
his fate. At midnight he leapt from his troubled couch, and
from that moment there began for him once more the long
slow agony of an irremediably shameful death. The first
thing he discovered was that all the soldiers who guarded
the Palace, and whose barracks were in the Excubitorium,
had deserted their posts. In utter despair, he sent for advice
to those whom he deemed to be his friends. As he
received from them no word of answer, he went to their
houses, one by one, in the dead of night, with a few attendants.
Inconceivably dreary was that walk through the dark
streets, which, as he passed by the silent palaces, seemed to
be haunted by the ghosts of the many whom he had slain.
But he found every door closed against him. Not a single
response was made to his appeals. Almost mad with misery,
he returned to his splendid chamber in the Golden House,
only to find that during his brief absence the attendants and