Covering her face Marianna hurried away. The next day she went to the defenders of the town and said:
"Either kill me because my son has become your enemy, or open the gate for me, that I may go to him."
They replied:
"You are a citizen, and the town should be dear to you; your son is just as much your enemy as he is ours."
"I am his mother: I love him and deem it to be my fault that he is what he is."
Then they consulted together as to what should be done and came to this decision:
"We cannot, in honour, kill you for your son's sin; we know you could not have suggested this terrible sin to him; and we can guess how you must be suffering. You are not wanted by the town, even as a hostage; your son does not trouble himself about you; we think he has forgotten you, the fiend—and therein lies your punishment, if you think you have deserved it! To us it seems more terrible than death!"
"Yes," she said; "it is more terrible."
They opened the gate for her, and let her out of the town. For a long time they watched her from the wall as she made her way over this native soil, sodden now with blood shed by her son. She walked slowly, dragging her feet painfully through the mire, bowing her head before the corpses of the defenders of the town and repugnantly spurning the pieces of broken weapons that lay in her path—for mothers hate the instruments of destruction, believing only in that which preserves life.
She walked carefully, as though she carried under her cloak a bowl full of some liquid which she was afraid of spilling. And as she went on, as her figure grew smaller and smaller, it seemed to those who watched her from the wall that their former depression and hopelessness were disappearing with her.