Agrippina entered alone. By a lamp of earthernware sat the woman who had played her part in so many crimes. She was imprisoned on the charge of having been concerned in various murders, but in those awful times she was too useful to be put to death. The phials and herbs which had been her stock-in-trade were left in her possession.
‘I need,’ said the Empress, in a tone of voice which she hardly took the trouble to disguise, ‘a particular kind of poison: not one to destroy life too suddenly; not one which will involve a lingering illness; but one which will first disturb the intellect, and so bring death at last.’
‘And who is it that thus commands?’ asked Locusta, lifting up to her visitor a face which would have had some traces of beauty but for its hard wickedness. ‘It is not to everyone that I supply poisons. Who knows but what you may be some slave plotting against our lord and master, Claudius? They who use me must pay me, and I must have my warrant.’
‘Is that warrant enough?’ said Agrippina, showing her the signet ring.
‘It is,’ said Locusta, no longer doubtful that her visitor was, as she had from the first suspected, the Empress herself. ‘But what shall be my reward, Aug--’
‘Finish that word,’ said the Empress, ‘and you shall die on the rack to-morrow. Fear not, you shall have reward enough. For the present take this;’ and she flung upon the table a purse full of gold.
Suspiciously yet greedily the prisoner seized it, and opening it with trembling fingers saw how rich was her guerdon. She went to a chest which lay in the corner of the room and, bending over it with the lamp, produced a small box, in which lay some flakes and powder of a pale yellow colour.
‘This,’ she said, ‘will do what you desire. Sprinkle it over any well-cooked dish, and it will not be visible. A few flakes of it will cause first delirium, then death. It has been tested.’
Without a word Agrippina took it, and, slightly waving her hand, glided out of the cell. Acerronia awaited her, and Pudens again went before them towards the apartments of the Empress and her ladies.
‘Une grande reine, fille, femme, mère de rois si puissants.’ --BOSSUET, _Oraison Funèbre d’Henriette de France_.
‘Boletos ... optimi quidem hos cibi, sed immenso exemplo in crimen adductos.’--PLINY, _N. H._ xxii. 46.