"Do you not wish to have children?"
"Why? In order that they may be killed? Somebody like me would kill them; it would grieve me, and no doubt I should be too old then, and too weak, to avenge them."
"You are handsome, but as sterile as the lightning," she said, sighing.
He answered, smiling:
"Yes, as the lightning."
And he fell asleep on her breast like a child.
Then she covered him with her black cloak and plunged a knife into his heart. He shuddered, and died instantaneously, for she, his mother, knew well where her son's heart beat. And having pushed the corpse off her knees to the feet of the astonished guards, she said, pointing in the direction of the town:
"As a citizen I have done all I could for my fatherland: as a mother I remain with my son! It is too late for me to give birth to another, my life is of no use to anyone."
And the same knife, still warm with his blood—her blood—she plunged into her own bosom, and doubtless struck the heart. When one's heart aches it is easy to strike it without missing.