Nero[…]sent his Satellites or officers toward him, to denounce the decree of his death to him[…].

Stop along the road for papers; scan headlines, make sure that no late-breaking story displaced the Vanguard piece and that it's intact (ninety-five percent – a satisfyingly high score), check out Doonesbury in the Grauniad, then away.

This New Yorkian overlay of Prague explains something, temporarily.

There was an air of gravity and importance about the garb of the person, and something indescribably odd, I might say awful, in the perfect, stonelike stillness of the figure, that effectually checked the testy comment which had at once risen to the lips of the irritated artist.