"Am I not your mother? Do I not feel sorry?"

At last she went away. She wept bitterly, wiping her face with the
edges of her kerchief, and she did not see the road. And the farther
she got from the prison the more bitterly she wept. She retraced her
steps to the prison, and then she strangely lost her way in the city
in which she had been born, in which she lived to her old age. She
strolled into a deserted little garden with a few old, gnarled trees,
and she seated herself upon a wet bench, from which the snow had
melted.

And suddenly she understood. He was to be hanged upon the morrow!

The old woman jumped up, about to run, but suddenly her head began to
swim terribly and she fell to the ground. The icy path was wet and
slippery, and she could not rise. She turned about, lifted herself on
her elbows and knelt, then fell back on her side. The black kerchief
had slipped down, baring upon the back of her head a bald spot amid
her muddy-gray hair; and then somehow it seemed to her that she was
feasting at a wedding, that her son was getting married, and she had
been drinking wine and had become intoxicated.

"I can't! My God! I can't!" she cried, as though declining something.
Swaying her head, she crawled over the wet, frozen crust, and all the
time it seemed to her that they were pouring out more wine for her,
more wine!

And her heart had already begun to pain her from her intoxicated
laughter, from the rejoicing, from the wild dancing-and they kept on
pouring more wine for her-pouring more wine!