"Caesar is our friend! Agrippa has been imprisoned!"

"Who told thee that?"

"I know it!" she replied, adding: "It was because he coveted the crown
of Caligula."

While living upon the charity of Antipas and Herodias, Agrippa had
intrigued to become king, a title for which the tetrarch was as eager as
he. But if this news were true, no more was to be feared from Agrippa's
scheming.

"The dungeons of Tiberias are hard to open, and sometimes life itself is
uncertain within their depths," said Herodias, with grim significance.

Antipas understood her; and, although she was Agrippa's sister, her
atrocious insinuation seemed entirely justifiable to the tetrarch.
Murder and outrage were to be expected in the management of political
intrigues; they were a part of the fatal inheritance of royal houses;
and in the family of Herodias nothing was more common.

Then she rapidly unfolded to the tetrarch the secrets of her recent
undertakings, telling him how many men had been bribed, what letters had
been intercepted, and the number of spies stationed at the city gates.
She did not hesitate even to tell him of her success in an attempt to
befool and seduce Eutyches the denunciator.

"And why should I not?" she said; "it cost me nothing. For thee, my
lord, have I not done more than that? Did I not even abandon my child?"