``But I am too old to endure much longer your
shame and my misery. Think not of me, but of
your wife and children, whom you would doom
to death or to life in bondage.''
Then Virgilia, his wife, and his children, came
forward and kissed him, and all the noble ladies
in the train burst into tears and bemoaned the
peril of their country.
Coriolanus still stood silent, his face working
with contending thoughts. At length he cried
out in heart-rending accents: ``O mother! What
have you done to me?''
Then clasping her hand he wrung it vehemently,
saying: ``Mother, the victory is yours!
A happy victory for you and Rome! but shame
and ruin for your son.''
Thereupon he embraced her with yearning
heart, and afterward clasped his wife and children
to his breast, bidding them return with their
tale of conquest to Rome. As for himself, he said,
only exile and shame remained.
Before the women reached home, the army of
the Volscians was on its homeward march. Coriolanus
never led it against Rome again. He lived
and died in exile, far from his wife and children.
The Romans, to honor Volumnia, and those
who had gone with her to the Volscian camp,
built a temple to ``Woman's Fortune,'' on the
spot where Coriolanus had yielded to his mother's
entreaties.
THE WIDOW AND HER THREE SONS
(ADAPTED)
One day a poor woman approached Mr.
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