"O yes, I remember them, mother. I need them also, for only in the memories of people are heroes immortal."
She replied:
"He is a hero who creates life, spiting death, who conquers death."
"No," he replied. "He who destroys becomes as famous as he who builds cities. For instance, we do not know whether Æneas or Romulus built Rome, but we know the name of Alaric and the other heroes who destroyed it."
"It has outlived all names," the mother suggested.
In this strain he spoke to her till sunset. She interrupted his vain talk less frequently and her proud head gradually drooped.
A mother creates, she preserves, and to talk about destruction in her presence is to speak against her understanding of life. But not knowing this the son was denying all that life meant for his mother.
A mother is always against death, and the hand that introduces death into people's dwellings is hateful and hostile to all mothers. But the son did not see it, blinded by the cold gleam of glory which kills the heart.
And he did not know that a mother can be just as resourceful, just as pitiless and fearless as an animal, when it concerns life which the mother herself creates and preserves.
She sat limply, with head bowed down. Through the open mouth of the rich tent of the leader could be seen the town where she had thrilled to the conception and travailed in the birth of this her firstborn child, whose only wish now was to destroy.