pitying eyes, and
spoke no word as they moved slowly past. On reaching the midst of the
camp, they saw Coriolanus on the general's seat, with the Volscian
chiefs gathered around him.

At first he wondered who these women could be. But when they came near,
and he saw his mother at the head of the train, his deep love for her
welled up so strongly in his heart that he could not restrain himself,
but sprang up and ran to meet and kiss her. The Roman matron stopped him
with a dignified gesture, saying,--

"Ere you kiss me, let me know whether I am speaking to an enemy or to my
son; whether I stand here as your prisoner or your mother."

He stood before her in silence, with bent head, and unable to speak.

"Must it then be that if I had never borne a son, Rome would have never
seen the camp of an enemy?" said Volumnia, in sorrowful tones. "But I am
too old to bear 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 and the children came up 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?"

Clasping her hand, he wrung it vehemently, saying, "Mother, the victory
is yours! A happy victory for you and Rome, but shame and ruin to your
son."

Then he embraced her with yearning heart, and afterwards 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 them against Rome again. He lived
and died in exile, far from his wife and children. When very old, he
sadly remarked, "That now in his old age he knew the full bitterness of
banishment."

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; and the first
priestess of this temple was Valeria, who had been inspired in the
temple of Jupiter with the thought that saved Rome.

_CINCINNATUS AND THE AEQUIANS._

In the old days of Rome, not far from the time when Coriolanus yielded
up his revenge at his mother