re terms that they
were unable to accept them. They returned and reported the matter, and
the Senate was thrown into confusion. The deputies were sent again,
instructed to ask for gentler terms, but now Coriolanus refused even
to let them enter his camp. This harsh repulse plunged Rome into mortal
terror.

All else having failed, the noble women of Rome, with Volumnia, the
mother of Coriolanus, at their head, went in procession from the city to
the Volscian camp to pray for mercy.

It was a sad and solemn spectacle, as this train of noble ladies, clad
in their habiliments of woe, and with bent heads and sorrowful faces,
wound through the hostile camp, from which they were not excluded as the
deputies had been. Even the Volscian soldiers watched them with pitying
eyes, and spoke no scornful 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. "Ere you kiss
me," she said, "let me know whether I speak 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 answer.

"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 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 himse