affairs--but that she should
cease to be a woman? Cannot you conceive the possibility that she
should show any affection save the affection of a mother for her son?
Ah! Pudentilla, you are unhappy in your offspring! Far better have
been barren than have borne such children! Ill-omened were the long
months through which you bore them in your womb and thankless your
fourteen years of widowhood! The viper, I am told, reaches the light
of day only by gnawing through its mother's womb; its parent must die
ere it be born. But your son is full-grown and the wounds he deals are
far bitterer, for they are inflicted on you while you yet live and see
the light of day. He insults your reserve, he arraigns your modesty,
he wounds you to the heart and outrages your dearest affections. Is
this the gratitude with which a dutiful son like yourself repays his
mother for the life she gave him, for the inheritance she won him, for
her long fourteen years of seclusion? Is the result of your uncle's
teaching this, that, if you were sure your sons would be like
yourself, you should be afraid to take a wife? There is a well-known
line

_I hate the boy that's wise before his time._

Yes, and who would not loathe and detest a boy that is 'wicked before
his time', when he sees you, like some frightful portent, old in sin
but young in years, with the bodily powers of a boy, yet deep in
guilt, with the bright face of a child, but with wickedness such as
might match grey hairs? Nay, the most offensive thing about him is
that his pernicious deeds go scot free; he is too young to punish, yet
old enough to do injury. Injury, did I say? No! crime, unfilial,
black, monstrous, intolerable crime!

86. The Athenians, when they captured the correspondence of their
enemy, Philip of Macedon, and the letters were being read in public
one by one, out of reverence for the common rights of humanity forbade
one letter to be read aloud, a letter addressed by Philip to his wife
Olympias. They spared the enemy that they might not intrude on the
privacy of husband and wife; they placed the law that is common to all
mankind above the claims of private vengeance. So enemy dealt with
enemy! How have you dealt with the mother that bore you? You see how
close is my parallel. Yet you read out aloud letters written by your
mother which, according to your assertion, concern her love affairs,
and you do so before this gathering here assembled, a gathering before
which