The harmony of our relationship was however to be broken. Titus returned to Rome from Africa, where he had been serving as his father's legate. He called, from courtesy, to see my mother.

'My father,' he said, 'sends you – has asked me to convey to you -the assurance of his high regard. He is fully sensible of the debt he owes you for his advancement. He has asked me to say that he is anxious to do whatever is in his power to – oh…' He broke off, and, with a sudden smile that seemed to light up our mean apartment, extended his hands in a vaguely helpless gesture and, abandoning his tone of formality, resumed: 'I'm no good at this kind of thing, my lady, though I have been trained in rhetoric. So let me put it in my own words, however loose and lacking in proper formality they may be. He's distressed to have learned of the condition in which you are obliged to live and now I see it for myself, well, I'm horrified, that a lady like you, of your birth, one who has been so kind to us, to me as a child, should be living like this. I remember that when poor Britannicus, my dearest friend, was so cruelly murdered – I can call it murder here, I suppose, though it would be as much as my life is worth to speak the word in other quarters – I remember then that when I wept, you dried my tears and comforted me, and that in the terrible days after, when I became like a little boy again, it was with your help and thanks to your sympathy and wise words that I was able to recover and resume my life. So, to see you confined in this miserable apartment makes me sad. More than that, it disgusts me. So, if there's anything I can do, anything my father can do – not that he can do much because, in my opinion, he clings to office, to his own position and perhaps even to his life by bare fingernails and fortune -well, just let me know. I really am devoted to you and your interest.'