9/15 If she wanted to reach the goal which she had held so long in view no time was to be lost. Let us hope that Seneca and Burrus were at least ignorant of the means which she took to effect her purpose. The dreaded Narcissus, the most formidable obstacle to her murderous plans, was seized with an attack of the gout. He was thus got out of the way, and she proceeded at once to her work of blood. Entrusting the secret to Halotus, the Emperor's _praegustator_--the slave whose office it was to protect him from poison by tasting every dish before him--and to his physician, Xenophon of Cos, she consulted Locusta, the Mrs.Turner of the period of this classical King James, as to the poison best suited to her purpose. |