ACT FIRST

ACT FIRSTSCENE ILONDON.  FOX’S LODGINGS, ARLINGTON STREET[FOX, the Foreign Secretary in the new Ministry of All-the-Talents,sits at a table writing.  He is a stout, swarthy man, with shaggyeyebrows, and his breathing is somewhat obstructed.  His clotheslook as though they had been slept in.  TROTTER, his privatesecretary, is writing at another table near.  A servant enters.]SERVANTAnother stranger presses to see you, sir.FOX [without raising his eyes]Oh, another.  What’s he like?SERVANTA foreigner, sir; though not so out-at-elbows as might be thoughtfrom the denomination.  He says he’s from Gravesend, having latelyleft Paris, and that you sent him a passport.  He comes with apolice-officer.FOXAh, to be sure.  I remember.  Bring him in, and tell the officerto wait outside.  [Servant goes out.]  Trotter, will you leave usfor a few minutes?  But be within hail.[The secretary retires, and the servant shows in a man who callshimself GUILLET DE GEVRILLIÈRE—a tall, thin figure of thirty,with restless eyes.  The door being shut behind him, he is leftalone with the minister.  FOX points to a seat, leans back, andsurveys his visitor.]GEVRILLIÈREThanks to you, sir, for this high privilegeOf hailing England, and of entering here.Without a fore-extended confidenceLike this of yours, my plans would not have sped.  [A Pause.]Europe, alas! sir, has her waiting footUpon the sill of further slaughter-scenes!FOXI fear it is so!—In your lines you wrote,I think, that you are a true Frenchman born?GEVRILLIÈREI did, sir.FOXHow contrived you, then, to cross?GEVRILLIÈREIt was from Embden that I shipped for Gravesend,In a small sailer called the “Toby,” sir,Masked under Prussian colours.  Embden I reachedOn foot, on horseback, and by sundry shifts,From Paris over Holland, secretly.FOXAnd you are stored with tidings of much pith,Whose tenour would be priceless to the state?GEVRILLIÈREI am.  It is, in brief, no more nor lessThan means to mitigate and even endThese welfare-wasting wars; ay, usher inA painless spell of peace.FOXPrithee speak on.No statesman can desire it more than I.GEVRILLIÈRE [looking to see that the door is shut]No nation, sir, can live its natural life,Or think its thoughts in these days unassailed,No crown-capt head enjoy tranquillity.The fount of such high spring-tide of disorder,Fevered disquietude, and forceful death,Is One,—a single man.  He—need I name?—The ruler is of France.FOXWell, in the pastI fear that it has liked so.  But we seeGood reason still to hope that broadening views,Politer wisdom now is helping himTo saner guidance of his arrogant car.GEVRILLIÈREThe generous hope will never be fulfilled!Ceasing to bluff, then ceases he to be.None sees that written largelier than himself.FOXThen what may be the valued revelationThat you can unlock in such circumstance?Sir, I incline to spell you as a spy,And not the honest help for honest menYou gave you out to be!GEVRILLIÈREI beg, sir,To spare me that suspicion.  Never a thoughtCould be more groundless.  Solemnly I vowThat notwithstanding what his signals showThe Emperor of France is as I say.—Yet bring I good assurance, and declareA medicine for all bruised Europe’s sores!FOX [impatiently]Well, parley to the point, for I confessNo new negotiation do I noteThat you can open up to work such cure.GEVRILLIÈREThe sovereign remedy for an ill effectIs the extinction of its evil cause.Safely and surely how to compass thisI have the weighty honour to disclose,Certain immunities being guaranteedBy those your power can influence, and yourself.FOX [astonished]Assassination?GEVRILLIÈREI care  not for names!A deed’s true name is as its purpose is.The lexicon of Liberty and PeaceDefines not this deed as assassination;Though maybe it is writ so in the tongueOf courts and universal tyranny.FOXWhy brought you this proposal here to me?GEVRILLIÈREMy knowledge of your love of things humane,Things free, things fair, of truth, of tolerance,Right, justice, national felicity,Prompted belief and hope in such a man!—The matter is by now well forwarded,A house at Plassy hired as pivot-pointFrom which the sanct intention can be worked,And soon made certain.  To our good alliesNo risk attaches; merely to ourselves.FOX [touching a private bell]Sir, your unconscienced hardihood confounds me.And your mind’s measure of my characterInsults it sorely.  By your late-sent linesOf specious import, by your bland address,I have been led to prattle hopefullyWith a cut-throat confessed![The head constable and the secretary enter at the same moment.]Ere worse befall,Sir, up and get you gone most dexterously!Conduct this man: lose never sight of him [to the officer]Till haled aboard some anchor-weighing craftBound to remotest coasts from us and France.GEVRILLIÈRE [unmoved]How you may handle me concerns me little.The project will as roundly ripe itselfWithout as with me.  Trusty souls remain,Though my far bones bleach white on austral shores!—I thank you for the audience.  Long ere thisI might have reft your life!  Ay, notice here—[He produces a dagger; which is snatched from him.]They need not have done that!  Even had you risenTo wrestle with, insult, strike, pinion me,It would have lain unused.  In hands like mineAnd my allies’, the man of peace is safe,Treat as he may our corporal tenementIn his misreading of a moral code.[Exeunt GEVRILLIÈRE and the constable.]FOXTrotter, indeed you well may stare at me!I look warm, eh?—and I am windless, too;I have sufficient reason to be so.That dignified and pensive gentlemanWas a bold bravo, waiting for his chance.He sketched a scheme for murdering Bonaparte,Either—as in my haste I understood—By shooting from a window as he passed,Or by some other wry and stealthy meansThat haunt sad brains which brood on despotism,But lack the tools to justly cope therewith!...On later thoughts I feel not fully sureIf, in my ferment, I did right in this.No; hail at once the man in charge of him,And give the word that he is to be detained.[The secretary goes out.  FOX walks to the window in deepreflection till the secretary returns.]SECRETARYI was in time, sir.  He has been detained.FOXNow what does strict state-honour ask of me?—No less than that I bare this poppling plotTo the French ruler and our fiercest foe!—Maybe ’twas but a hoax to pocket pay;And yet it can mean more...The man’s indifference to his own vague doomBeamed out as one exalted trait in him,And showed the altitude of his rash dream!—Well, now I’ll get me on to Downing Street,There to draw up a note to TalleyrandRetailing him the facts.—What signatureSubscribed this desperate fellow when he wrote?SECRETARY“Guillet de la Gevrillière.”  Here it stands.FOXDoubtless it was a false one.  Come along.  [Looking out the window.]Ah—here’s Sir Francis Vincent: he’ll go with us.Ugh, what a twinge!  Time signals that he drawsTowards the twelfth stroke of my working-day!I fear old England soon must voice her speechWith Europe through another mouth than mine!SECRETARYI trust not, sir.  Though you should rest awhile.The very servants half are invalidFrom the unceasing labours of your post,And these cloaked visitors of every climeThat market on your magnanimityTo gain an audience morning, night, and noon,Leaving you no respite.FOX’Tis true; ’tis true.—How I shall love my summer holidayAt pleasant Saint-Ann’s Hill![He leans on the secretary’s arm, and they go out.]SCENE IITHE ROUTE BETWEEN LONDON AND PARIS[A view now nocturnal, now diurnal, from on high over the Straitsof Dover, and stretching from city to city.  By night Paris andLondon seem each as a little swarm of lights surrounded by a halo;by day as a confused glitter of white and grey.  The Channelbetween them is as a mirror reflecting the sky, brightly orfaintly, as the hour may be.]SPIRIT OF THE PITIESWhat mean these couriers shooting shuttlewiseTo Paris and to London, turn and turn?RUMOURS [chanting in antiphons]IThe aforesaid tidings fro the minister, spokesman in England’scause to states afar,IITraverse the waters borne by one of such; and thereto Bonaparte’sresponses are:I“The principles of honour and of truth which ever actuate thesender’s mindII“Herein are written largely!  Take our thanks: we read thatthis conjuncture undesignedI“Unfolds felicitous means of showing you that still our eyesare set, as yours, on peace,II“To which great end the Treaty of Amiens must be the ground-work of our amities.”IFrom London then: “The path to amity the King of Englandstudies to pursue;II“With Russia hand in hand he is yours to close the longconvulsions thrilling Europe through.”IStill fare the shadowy missioners across, by Dover-road andCalais Channel-track,IIFrom Thames-side towers to Paris palace-gates; from Parisleisurely to London back.ITill thus speaks France: “Much grief it gives us that, beingpledged to treat, one Emperor with one King,II“You yet have struck a jarring counternote and tone that keysnot with such promising.I“In these last word, then, of this pregnant parle; I trust Imay persuade your ExcellencyII“That in no circumstance, on no pretence, a party to our pact canRussia be.”SPIRIT SINISTERFortunately for the manufacture of corpses by machinery Napoléonsticks to this veto, and so wards off the awkward catastrophe ofa general peace descending upon Europe.  Now England.RUMOURS [continuing]IThereon speeds down through Kent and Picardy, evenly as somesouthing sky-bird’s shade:II“We gather not from your Imperial lines a reason why our wordsshould be reweighed.I“We hold Russia not as our ally that is to be: she stands fully-plighted so;II“Thus trembles peace upon this balance-point: will you thatRussia be let in or no?”IThen France rolls out rough words across the strait: “To treatwith you confederate with the Tsar,II“Presumes us sunk in sloughs of shamefulness from which we yetstand gloriously afar!I“The English army must be Flanders-fed, and entering Picardy withpompous prance,II“To warrant such!  Enough.  Our comfort is, the crime of furtherstrife lies not with France.”SPIRIT OF THE PITIESAlas! what prayer will save the struggling lands,Whose lives are ninepins to these bowling hands?CHORUS OF RUMOURSFrance secretly with—Russia plights her troth!Britain, that lonely isle, is slurred by both.SPIRIT SINISTERIt is as neat as an uncovered check at chess!  You may now markFox’s blank countenance at finding himself thus rewarded for thegood turn done to Bonaparte, and at the extraordinary conduct ofhis chilly friend the Muscovite.SPIRIT OF THE PITIESHis hand so trembles it can scarce retainThe quill wherewith he lets Lord Yarmouth knowReserve is no more needed!SPIRIT IRONICNow enters another character of this remarkable little piece—LordLauderdale—and again the messengers fly!SPIRIT OF THE PITIESBut what strange figure, pale and noiseless, comes,By us perceived, unrecognized by those,Into the very closet and retreatOf England’s Minister?SPIRIT OF THE YEARSThe Tipstaff heOf the Will, the Many-masked, my good friend Death.—The statesman’s feeble form you may perceiveNow hustled into the Invisible,And the unfinished game of DynastiesLeft to proceed without him!SPIRIT OF THE PITIESHere, then, endsMy hope for Europe’s reason-wrought repose!He was the friend of peace—did his great bestTo shed her balms upon humanity;And now he’s gone!  No substitute remains.SPIRIT IRONICAy; the remainder of the episode is frankly farcical.  Negotiationsare again affected; but finally you discern Lauderdale applying forpassports; and the English Parliament declares to the nation thatpeace with France cannot be made.RUMOURS [concluding]IThe smouldering dudgeon of the Prussian king, meanwhile, upon thehorizon’s rim afarIIBursts into running flame, that all his signs of friendliness weremet by moves for war.IAttend and hear, for hear ye faintly may, his manifesto made atErfurt town,IIThat to arms only dares he now confide the safety and the honourof his crown!SPIRIT OF THE YEARSDraw down the curtain, then, and overscreenThis too-protracted verbal fencing-scene;And let us turn to clanging foot and horse,Ordnance, and all the enginry of Force![Clouds close over the perspective.]SCENE IIITHE STREETS OF BERLIN[It is afternoon, and the thoroughfares are crowded with citizensin an excited and anxious mood.  A central path is left open forsome expected arrival.There enters on horseback a fair woman, whose rich brown curlsstream flutteringly in the breeze, and whose long blue habitflaps against the flank of her curvetting white mare.  She isthe renowned LOUISA, QUEEN OF PRUSSIA, riding at the head of aregiment of hussars and wearing their uniform.  As she prancesalong the thronging citizens acclaim her enthusiastically.]SPIRIT OF THE PITIESWho is this fragile fair, in fighting trim?SPIRIT OF THE YEARSShe is the pride of Prussia, whose resolveGives ballast to the purpose of her spouse,And holds him to what men call governing.SPIRIT OF THE PITIESQueens have engaged in war; but war’s loud tradeRings with a roar unnatural, fitful, forced,Practised by woman’s hands!SPIRIT OF THE YEARSOf her viewThe enterprise is that of scores of men,The strength but half-a-ones.SPIRIT OF THE PITIESWould fate had ruledThe valour had been his, hers but the charm!SPIRIT OF RUMOURBut he has nothing on’t, and she has all.The shameless satires of the bulletinsdispatched to Paris, thence the wide world through,Disturb the dreams of her by those who love her,And thus her brave adventurers for the realmHave blurred her picture, soiled her gentleness,And wrought her credit harm.FIRST CITIZEN [vociferously]Yes, by God: send and ultimatum to Paris, by God; that’s what we’lldo, by God.  The Confederation of the Rhine was the evil thought ofan evil man bent on ruining us!SECOND CITIZENThis country double-faced and double-tongued,This France, or rather say, indeed, this Man—[Peoples are honest dealers in the mass]—This man, to sign a stealthy scroll with RussiaThat shuts us off from all indemnities,While swearing faithful friendship with our King,And, still professing our safe wardenry,To fatten other kingdoms at our cost,Insults us grossly, and makes Europe clangWith echoes of our wrongs.  The little statesOf this antique and homely German landAre severed from their blood-allies and kin—Hereto of one tradition, interest, hope—In calling lord this rank adventurer,Who’ll thrust them as a sword against ourselves.—Surely Great Frederick sweats within his tomb!THIRD CITIZENWell, we awake, though we have slumbered long,And She is sent by Heaven to kindle us.[The QUEEN approaches to pass back again with her suite.  Thevociferous applause is repeated.  They regard her as she nears.]To cry her Amazon, a blusterer,A brazen comrade of the bold dragoonsWhose uniform she dons!  Her, whose each actShows but a mettled modest woman’s zeal,Without a hazard of her dignityOr moment’s sacrifice of seemliness,To fend off ill from home!FOURTH CITIZEN [entering]The tidings fly that Russian AlexanderDeclines with emphasis to ratifyThe pact of his ambassador with France,And that the offer made the English KingTo compensate the latter at our costHas not been taken.THIRD CITIZENAnd it never will be!Thus evil does not always flourish, faith.Throw down the gage while god is fair to us;He may be foul anon![A pause.]FIFTH CITIZEN [entering]Our ambassador Lucchesini is already leaving Paris.  He could standthe Emperor no longer, so the Emperor takes his place, has decidedto order his snuff by the ounce and his candles by the pound, lesthe should not be there long enough to use more.[The QUEEN goes by, and they gaze at here and at the escort ofsoldiers.]Haven’t we soldiers?  Haven’t we the Duke of Brunswick to command’em?  Haven’t we provisions, hey?  Haven’t we fortresses and anElbe, to bar the bounce of an invader?[The cavalcade passes out of sight and the crowd draws off.]FIRST CITIZENBy God, I must to beer and ’bacco, to soften my rage![Exeunt citizens.]SPIRIT OF THE YEARSSo doth the Will objectify ItselfIn likeness of a sturdy people’s wrath,Which takes no count of the new trends of time,Trusting ebbed glory in a present need.—What if their strength should equal not their fire,And their devotion dull their vigilance?—Uncertainly, by fits, the Will doth workIn Brunswick’s blood, their chief, as in themselves;It ramifies in streams that intermitAnd make their movement vague, old-fashioned, slowTo foil the modern methods counterposed![Evening descends on the city, and it grows dusk.  The soldiersbeing dismissed from duty, some young officers in a frolic ofdefiance halt, draw their swords and whet them on the steps ofthe FRENCH AMBASSADOR’S residence as they pass.  The noise ofwhetting is audible through the street.]CHORUS OF THE PITIES [aerial music]The soul of a nation distrestIs aflame,And heaving with eager unrestIn its aimTo assert its old prowess, and stouten its chronicled fame!SEMICHORUS IIt boils in a boisterous thrillThrough the mart,Unconscious well-nigh as the WillOf its part:Would it wholly might be so, and feel not the forthcoming smart!SEMICHORUS IIIn conclaves no voice of reflectionIs heard,King, Councillors, grudge circumspectionA word,And victory is visioned, and seemings as facts are averred.CHORUSYea, the soul of a nation distrestIs aflame,And heaving with eager unrestIn its aimAt supreme desperations to blazon the national name![Midnight strikes, lights are extinguished one by one, and thescene disappears.]SCENE IVTHE FIELD OF JENA[Day has just dawned through a grey October haze.  The French,with their backs to the nebulous light, loom out and showthemselves to be already under arms; LANNES holding the centre,NEY the right, SOULT the extreme right, and AUGEREAU the left.The Imperial Guard and MURAT’S cavalry are drawn up on theLandgrafenberg, behind the centre of the French position.  Ina valley stretching along to the rear of this height flowsnorthward towards the Elbe the little river Saale, on whichthe town of Jena stands.On the irregular plateaux in front of the French lines, and almostclose to the latter, are the Prussians un TAUENZIEN; and away ontheir right rear towards Weimar the bulk of the army under PRINCEHOHENLOHE.  The DUKE OF BRUNSWICK [father of the Princess ofWales] is twelve miles off with his force at Auerstadt, in thevalley of the Ilm.Enter NAPOLÉON, and men bearing torches who escort him.  He movesalong the front of his troops, and is lost to view behind themist and surrounding objects.  But his voice is audible.]NAPOLÉONKeep you good guard against their cavalry,In past repute the formidablest known,And such it may be now; so asks our heed.Receive it, then, in square, unflinchingly.—Remember, men, last year you captured Ulm,So make no doubt that you will vanquish these!SOLDIERSLong live the Emperor!  Advance, advance!DUMB SHOWAlmost immediately glimpses reveal that LANNES’ corps is movingforward, and amid an unbroken clatter of firelocks spreads outfurther and wider upon the stretch of country in front of theLandgrafenberg.  The Prussians, surprised at discerning in thefog such masses of the enemy close at hand, recede towards theIlm.From PRINCE HOHENLOHE, who is with the body of the Prussians onthe Weimar road to the south, comes perspiring the bulk of theinfantry to rally the retreating regiments of TAUENZIEN, and hehastens up himself with the cavalry and artillery.  The actionis renewed between him and NEY as the clocks of Jena strike ten.But AUGEREAU is seen coming to Ney’s assistance on one flank ofthe Prussians, SOULT bearing down on the other, while NAPOLÉONon the Landgrafenberg orders the Imperial Guard to advance.  Thedoomed Prussians are driven back, this time more decisively,falling in great numbers and losing many as prisoners as theyreel down the sloping land towards the banks of the Ilm behindthem.  GENERAL RUCHEL, in a last despairing effort to rally,faces the French onset in person and alone.  He receives a bulletthrough the chest and falls dead.The crisis of the struggle is reached, though the battle is notover.  NAPOLÉON, discerning from the Landgrafenberg that thedecisive moment has come, directs MURAT to sweep forward with allhis cavalry.  It engages the shattered Prussians, surrounds them,and cuts them down by thousands.From behind the horizon, a dozen miles off, between the din of gunsin the visible battle, there can be heard an ominous roar, as of asecond invisible battle in progress there.  Generals and otherofficers look at each other and hazard conjectures between whiles,the French with exultation, the Prussians gloomily.HOHENLOHEThat means the Duke of Brunswick, I conceive,Impacting on the enemy’s further forceLed by, they say, Davout and Bernadotte.God grant his star less lurid rays then ours,Or this too pregnant, hoarsely-groaning dayShall, ere its loud delivery be done,Have twinned disasters to the fatherlandThat fifty years will fail to sepulchre!Enter a straggler on horseback.STRAGGLERPrince, I have circuited by Auerstadt,And bring ye dazzling tidings of the fight,Which, if report by those who saw’t be true,Has raged thereat from clammy day-dawn on,And left us victors!HOHENLOHEThitherward go I,And patch the mischief wrought upon us here!Enter a second and then a third straggler.Well, wet-faced men, whence come ye?  What d’ye bring?STRAGGLER IIYour Highness, I rode straight from Hassenhausen,Across the stream of battle as it boiledBetwixt that village and the banks of Saale,And such the turmoil that no man could speakOn what the issue was!HOHENLOHE [To Straggler III]Can you add aught?STRAGGLER IIINothing that’s clear, your Highness.HOHENLOHEMan, your mienIs that of one who knows, but will not say.Detain him here.STRAGGLER IIIThe blackness of my news,Your Highness, darks my sense!... I saw this much:His charging grenadiers, received in the faceA grape-shot stroke that gouged out half of it,Proclaiming then and there his life fordone.HOHENLOHEFallen?  Brunswick!  Reed in council, rock in fire...Ah, this he looked for.  Many a time of lateHas he, by some strange gift of foreknowing,Declared his fate was hovering in such wise!STRAGGLER IIIHis aged form being borne beyond the strife,The gallant Moellendorf, in flushed despair,Swore he would not survive; and, pressing on,He, too, was slaughtered.  Patriotic rageBrimmed marshals’ breasts and men’s.  The King himselfFought like the commonest.  But nothing served.His horse is slain; his own doom yet unknown.Prince William, too, is wounded.  Brave SchmettauIs broke; himself disabled.  All give way,And regiments crash like trees at felling-time!HOHENLOHENo more.  We match it here.  The yielding linesStill sweep us backward.  Backward we must go![Exeunt HOHENLOHE, Staff, stragglers, etc.]The Prussian retreat from Jena quickens to a rout, many thousandstaken prisoners by MURAT, who pursues them to Weimar, where theinhabitants fly shrieking through the streets.The October day closes in to evening.  By this time the troopsretiring with the King of Prussia from the second battlefieldof Auerstadt have intersected RUCHEL’S and HOHENLOHE’S flyingbattalions from Jena.  The crossing streams of fugitives strikepanic into each other, and the tumult increases with thethickening darkness till night renders the scene invisible,and nothing remains but a confused diminishing noise, and fitfullights here and there.SCENE VBERLIN.  A ROOM OVERLOOKING A PUBLIC PLACE[A fluttering group of ladies is gathered at the window, gazingout and conversing anxiously.  The time draws towards noon, whenthe clatter of a galloping horse’s hoofs is heard echoing up thelong Potsdamer-Strasse, and presently turning into the Leipziger-Strasse reaches the open space commanded by the ladies’ outlook.It ceases before a Government building opposite them, and therider disappears into the courtyard.]FIRST LADYYes: surely he is a courier from the field!SECOND LADYShall we not hasten down, and take from himThe doom his tongue may deal us?THIRD LADYWe shall catchAs soon by watching here as hastening henceThe tenour of his new.  [They wait.]  Ah, yes: see—seeThe bulletin is straightway to be nailed!He was, then, from the field....[They wait on while the bulletin is affixed.]SECOND LADYI cannot scan the words the scroll proclaims;Peer as I will, these too quick-thronging dreadsBring water to the eyes.  Grant us, good Heaven,That victory be where she is needed mostTo prove Thy goodness!... What do you make of it?THIRD LADY [reading, through a glass]“The battle strains us sorely; but resolveMay save us even now.  Our last attackHas failed, with fearful loss.  Once more we strive.”[A long silence in the room.  Another rider is heard approaching,above the murmur of the gathering citizens.  The second ladylooks out.]SECOND LADYA straggler merely he.... But they decide,At last, to post his news, wild-winged or no.THIRD LADY [reading again through her glass]“The Duke of Brunswick, leading on a charge,Has met his death-doom.  Schmettau, too, is slain;Prince William wounded.  But we stand as yet,Engaging with the last of our reserves.”[The agitation in the street communicates itself to the room.Some of the ladies weep silently as they wait, much longer thistime.  Another horseman is at length heard clattering into thePlatz, and they lean out again with painful eagerness.]SECOND LADYAn adjutant of Marshal Moellendorf’sIf I define him rightly.  Read—O read!—Though reading draw them from their socket-holesUse your eyes now!THIRD LADY [glass up]As soon as ’tis affixed....Ah—this means much!  The people’s air and gaitToo well betray disaster.  [Reading.]  “Berliners,The King has lost the battle!  Bear it well.The foremost duty of a citizenIs to maintain a brave tranquillity.This is what I, the Governor, demandOf men and women now.... The King lives still.”[They turn from the window and sit in a silence broken only bymonosyllabic words, hearing abstractedly the dismay withoutthat has followed the previous excitement and hope.The stagnation is ended by a cheering outside, of subduedemotional quality, mixed with sounds of grief.  They againlook forth.  QUEEN LOUISA is leaving the city with a verysmall escort, and the populace seem overcome.  They straintheir eyes after her as she disappears.  Enter fourth lady.]FIRST LADYHow does she bear it?  Whither does she go?FOURTH LADYShe goes to join the King at Custrin, thereTo abide events—as we.  Her heroismSo schools her sense of her calamitiesAs out of grief to carve new queenliness,And turn a mobile mien to statuesque,Save for a sliding tear.[The ladies leave the window severally.]SPIRIT IRONICSo the Will plays at flux and reflux still.This monarchy, one-half whose pedestalIs built of Polish bones, has bones home-made!Let the fair woman bear it.  Poland did.SPIRIT OF THE YEARSMeanwhile the mighty Emperor nears apace,And soon will glitter at the city gatesWith palpitating drums, and breathing brass,And rampant joyful-jingling retinue.[An evening mist cloaks the scene.]SCENE VITHE SAME[It is a brilliant morning, with a fresh breeze, and not a cloud.The open Platz and the adjoining streets are filled with densecrowds of citizens, in whose upturned faces curiosity hasmastered consternation and grief.Martial music is heard, at first faint, then louder, followedby a trampling of innumerable horses and a clanking of arms andaccoutrements.  Through a street on the right hand of the viewfrom the windows come troops of French dragoons heralding thearrival of BONAPARTE.Re-enter the room hurriedly and cross to the windows severalladies as before, some in tears.]FIRST LADYThe kingdom late of Prussia, can it beThat thus it disappears?—a patriot-cry,A battle, bravery, ruin; and no more?SECOND LADYThank God the Queen’s gone!THIRD LADYTo what sanctuary?From earthquake shocks there is no sheltering cell!—Is this what men call conquest?  Must it closeAs historied conquests do, or be annulledBy modern reason and the urbaner sense?—Such issue none would venture to predict,Yet folly ’twere to nourish foreshaped fearsAnd suffer in conjecture and in deed.—If verily our country be dislimbed,Then at the mercy of his dominationThe face of earth will lie, and vassal kingsStand waiting on himself the Overking,Who ruling rules all; till desperatenessSting and excite a bonded last resistance,And work its own release.SECOND LADYHe comes even nowFrom sacrilege.  I learn that, since the fight,In marching here by Potsdam yesterday,Sans-Souci Palace drew his curious feet,Where even great Frederick’s tomb was bared to him.FOURTH LADYAll objects on the Palace—cared for, keptEven as they were when our arch-monarch died—The books, the chair, the inkhorn, and the penHe quizzed with flippant curiosity;And entering where our hero’s bones are urnedHe seized the sword and standards treasured there,And with a mixed effrontery and regardDeclared they should be all dispatched to ParisAs gifts to the Hotel des Invalides.THIRD LADYSuch rodomontade is cheap: what matters it![A galaxy of marshals, forming Napoléon’s staff, now enters thePlatz immediately before the windows.  In the midst rides theEMPEROR himself.  The ladies are silent.  The procession passesalong the front until it reaches the entrance to the Royal Palace.At the door NAPOLÉON descends from his horse and goes into thebuilding amid the resonant trumpetings of his soldiers and thesilence of the crowd.]SECOND LADY [impressed]O why does such a man debase himselfBy countenancing loud scurrilityAgainst a queen who cannot make reprise!A power so ponderous needs no littleness—The last resort of feeble desperates![Enter fifth lady.]FIFTH LADY [breathlessly]Humiliation grows acuter still.He placards rhetoric to his soldieryOn their distress of us and our allies,Declaring he’ll not stack away his armsTill he has choked the remaining foes of FranceIn their own gainful glut.—Whom means he, think you?FIRST LADYUs?THIRD LADYRussia?  Austria?FIFTH LADYNeither: England.—Yea,Her he still holds the master mischief-mind,And marrer of the countries’ quietude,By exercising untold tyrannyOver all the ports and seas.SECOND LADYThen England’s doomed!When he has overturned the Russian rule,England comes next for wrack.  They say that know!...Look—he has entered by the Royal doorsAnd makes the Palace his.—Now let us go!—Our course, alas! is—whither?[Exeunt ladies.  The curtain drops temporarily.]SEMICHORUS I OF IRONIC SPIRITS [aerial music]Deeming himself omnipotentWith the Kings of the Christian continent,To warden the waves was his further bent.SEMICHORUS IIBut the weaving Will from eternity,[Hemming them in by a circling sea]Evolved the fleet of the Englishry.SEMICHORUS IThe wane of his armaments ill-advised,At Trafalgar, to a force despised,Was a wound which never has cicatrized.SEMICHORUS IIThis, O this is the cramp that grips!And freezes the Emperor’s finger-tipsFrom signing a peace with the Land of Ships.CHORUSThe Universal-empire plotDemands the rule of that wave-walled spot;And peace with England cometh not!THE SCENE REOPENS[A lurid gloom now envelops the Platz and city; and Bonaparteis heard as from the Palace:VOICE OF NAPOLÉONThese monstrous violations being in trainOf law and national integritiesBy English arrogance in things marine,[Which dares to capture simple merchant-craft,In honest quest of harmless merchandize,For crime of kinship to a hostile power]Our vast, effectual, and majestic strokesIn this unmatched campaign, enable meTo bar from commerce with the ContinentAll keels of English frame.  Hence I decree:—SPIRIT OF RUMOURThis outlines his renowned “Berlin Decree.”Maybe he meditates its scheme in sleep,Or hints it to his suite, or syllables itWhile shaping, to his scribes.VOICE OF NAPOLÉONAll England’s ports to suffer strict blockade;All traffic with that land to cease forthwith;All natives of her isles, wherever met,To be detained as windfalls of the war.All chattels of her make, material, mould,To be good prize wherever pounced upon:And never a bottom hailing from her shoresBut shall be barred from every haven here.This for her monstrous harms to human rights,And shameless sauciness to neighbour powers!SPIRIT SINISTERI spell herein that our excellently high-coloured drama is notplayed out yet!SPIRIT OF THE YEARSNor will it be for many a month of moans,And summer shocks, and winter-whitened bones.[The night gets darker, and the Palace outlines are lost.]SCENE VIITILSIT AND THE RIVER NIEMEN[The scene is viewed from the windows of BONAPARTE’S temporaryquarters.  Some sub-officers of his suite are looking out uponit.It is the day after midsummer, about one o’clock.  A multitudeof soldiery and spectators lines each bank of the broad riverwhich, stealing slowly north-west, bears almost exactly in itsmidst a moored raft of bonded timber.  On this as a floor standsa gorgeous pavilion of draped woodwork, having at each side,facing the respective banks of the stream, a round-headed doorwayrichly festooned.  The cumbersome erection acquires from thecurrent a rhythmical movement, as if it were breathing, and thebreeze now and then produces a shiver on the face of the stream.]DUMB SHOWOn the south-west or Prussian side rides the EMPEROR NAPOLÉONin uniform, attended by the GRAND DUKE OF BERG, the PRINCE OFNEUFCHÂTEL, MARSHAL BESSIERES, DUROC Marshal of the Palace, andCAULAINCOURT Master of the Horse.  The EMPEROR looks well, but isgrowing fat.  They embark on an ornamental barge in front of them,which immediately puts off.  It is now apparent to the watchersthat a precisely similar enactment has simultaneously taken placeon the opposite or Russian bank, the chief figure being theEMPEROR ALEXANDER—a graceful, flexible man of thirty, with acourteous manner and good-natured face.  He has come out froman inn on that side accompanied by the GRAND DUKE CONSTANTINE,GENERAL BENNIGSEN, GENERAL OUWAROFF, PRINCE LABANOFF, and ADJUTANT-GENERAL COUNT LIEVEN.The two barges draw towards the raft, reaching the opposite sidesof it about the same time, amidst discharges of cannon.  EachEmperor enters the door that faces him, and meeting in the centreof the pavilion they formally embrace each other.  They retiretogether to the screened interior, the suite of each remaining inthe outer half of the pavilion.More than an hour passes while they are thus invisible.  The Frenchofficers who have observed the scene from the lodging of NAPOLÉONwalk about idly, and ever and anon go curiously to the windows,again to watch the raft.CHORUS OF THE YEARS [aerial music]The prelude to this smooth scene—mark well!—were the shockswhereof the times gave tokenVaguely to us ere last year’s snows shut over Lithuanian pineand pool,Which we told at the fall of the faded leaf, when the pride ofPrussia was bruised and broken,And the Man of Adventure sat in the seat of the Man of Methodand rigid Rule.SEMICHORUS I OF THE PITIESSnows incarnadined were thine, O Eylau, field of the wide whitespaces,And frozen lakes, and frozen limbs, and blood iced hard as it leftthe veins:Steel-cased squadrons swathed in cloud-drift, plunging to doomthrough pathless places,And forty thousand dead and near dead, strewing the early-lightedplains.Friedland to these adds its tale of victims, its midnight marchesand hot collisions,Its plunge, at his word, on the enemy hooped by the bended riverand famed Mill stream,As he shatters the moves of the loose-knit nations to curb hisexploitful soul’s ambitions,And their great Confederacy dissolves like the diorama of a dream.DUMB SHOW [continues]NAPOLÉON and ALEXANDER emerge from their seclusion, and each isbeheld talking to the suite of his companion apparently inflattering compliment.  An effusive parting, which signifiesitself to be but temporary, is followed by their return to theriver shores amid the cheers of the spectators.NAPOLÉON and his marshals arrive at the door of his quarters andenter, and pass out of sight to other rooms than that of theforeground in which the observers are loitering.  Dumb show ends.[A murmured conversation grows audible, carried on by two personsin the crowd beneath the open windows.  Their dress being thenative one, and their tongue unfamiliar, they seem to the officersto be merely inhabitants gossiping; and their voices continueunheeded.]FIRST ENGLISH SPY14[below]Did you get much for me to send on?SECOND ENGLISH SPYMuch; and startling, too.  “Why are we at war?” says Napoléon whenthey met.—“Ah—why!” said t’other.—“Well,” said Boney, “I amfighting you only as an ally of the English, and you are simplyserving them, and not yourself, in fighting me.”—“In that case,”says Alexander, “we shall soon be friends, for I owe her as greata grudge as you.”FIRST SPYDammy, go that length, did they!SECOND SPYThen they plunged into the old story about English selfishness,and greed, and duplicity.  But the climax related to Spain, andit amounted to this: they agreed that the Bourbons of the Spanishthrone should be made to abdicate, and Bonaparte’s relations setup as sovereigns instead of them.FIRST SPYSomebody must ride like hell to let our Cabinet know!SECOND SPYI have written it down in cipher, not to trust to memory, and toguard against accidents.—They also agree that France should havethe Pope’s dominions, Malta, and Egypt; that Napoléon’s brotherJoseph should have Sicily as well as Naples, and that they wouldpartition the Ottoman Empire between them.FIRST SPYCutting up Europe like a plum-pudding.  Par nobile fratrum!SECOND SPYThen they worthy pair came to poor Prussia, whom Alexander, theysay, was anxious about, as he is under engagements to her.  Itseems that Napoléon agrees to restore to the King as many of hisstates as will cover Alexander’s promise, so that the Tsar mayfeel free to strike out in this new line with his new friend.FIRST SPYSurely this is but surmise?SECOND SPYNot at all.  One of the suite overheard, and I got round him.  Therewas much more, which I did not learn.  But they are going to sootheand flatter the unfortunate King and Queen by asking them to a banquethere.FIRST SPYSuch a spirited woman will never come!SECOND SPYWe shall see.  Whom necessity compels needs must: and she has gonethrough an Iliad of woes!FIRST SPYIt is this Spanish business that will stagger England, by God!  Andnow to let her know it.FRENCH SUBALTERN [looking out above]What are those townspeople talking about so earnestly, I wonder?  Thelingo of this place has an accent akin to English.SECOND SUBALTERNNo doubt because the races are both Teutonic.[The spies observe that they are noticed, and disappear in thecrowd.  The curtain drops.]SCENE VIIITHE SAME[The midsummer sun is low, and a long table in the aforeshownapartment is laid out for a dinner, among the decorations beingbunches of the season’s roses.At the vacant end of the room [divided from the dining end byfolding-doors, now open] there are discovered the EMPEROR NAPOLÉON,the GRAND-DUKE CONSTANTINE, PRINCE HENRY OF PRUSSIA, the PRINCEROYAL OF BAVARIA, the GRAND DUKE OF BERG, and attendant officers.Enter the TSAR ALEXANDER.  NAPOLÉON welcomes him, and the twainmove apart from the rest.  BONAPARTE placing a chair for hisvisitor and flinging himself down on another.]NAPOLÉONThe comforts I can offer are not great,Nor is the accommodation more than scantThat falls to me for hospitality;But, as it is, accept.ALEXANDERIt serves well.And to unbrace the bandages of stateIs as clear air to incense-stifled souls.What of the Queen?NAPOLÉONShe’s coming with the King.We have some quarter-hour to spare or moreBefore their Majesties are timed for us.ALEXANDERGood.  I would speak of them.  That she should show hereAfter the late events, betokens much!Abasement in so proud a woman’s heart  [His voice grows tremulous.]Is not without a dash of painfulness.And I beseech you, sire, that you hold outSome soothing hope for her?NAPOLÉONI have, already!—Now, sire, to those affairs we entered on:Strong friendship, grown secure, bids me repeatThat you have been much duped by your allies.[ALEXANDER shows mortification.]Prussia’s a shuffler, England a self-seeker,Nobility has shone in you alone.Your error grew of over-generous dreams,And misbeliefs by dullard ministers.By treating personally we speed affairsMore in an hour than they in blundering months.Between us two, henceforth, must stand no third.There’s peril in it, while England’s mean ambitionStill works to get us skewered by the ears;And in this view your chiefs-of-staff concur.ALEXANDERThe judgment of my officers I share.NAPOLÉONTo recapitulate.  Nothing can greaten youLike this alliance.  Providence has flungMy good friend Sultan Selim from his throne,Leaving me free in dealings with the Porte;And I discern the hour as one to endA rule that Time no longer lets cohere.If I abstain, its spoils will go to swellThe power of this same England, our annoy;That country which enchains the trade of townsWith such bold reach as to monopolize,Among the rest, the whole of Petersburg’s—Ay!—through her purse, friend, as the lender there!—Shutting that purse, she may incite to—what?Muscovy’s fall, its ruler’s murdering.Her fleet at any minute can encoopYours in the Baltic; in the Black Sea, too;And keep you snug as minnows in a glass!Hence we, fast-fellowed by our mutual foes,Seaward the British, Germany by land,And having compassed, for our common good,The Turkish Empire’s due partitioning,As comrades can conjunctly rule the worldTo its own gain and our eternal fame!ALEXANDER [stirred and flushed]I see vast prospects opened!—yet, in truth,Ere you, sire, broached these themes, their outlines loomedNot seldom in my own imaginings;But with less clear a vision than endowsSo great a captain, statesman, philosoph,As centre in yourself; whom had I knownSooner by some few years, months, even weeks,I had been spared full many a fault of rule.—Now as to Austria.  Should we call her in?NAPOLÉONTwo in a bed I have slept, but never three.ALEXANDERHa-ha!  Delightful.  And, then nextly, Spain?NAPOLÉONI lighted on some letters at Berlin,Wherein King Carlos offered to attack me.A Bourbon, minded thus, so near as Spain,Is dangerous stuff.  He must be seen to soon!...A draft, then, of our treaty being penned,We will peruse it later.  If King GeorgeWill not, upon the terms there offered him,Conclude a ready peace, he can be forced.Trumpet yourself as France’s firm ally,And Austria will fain to do the same:England, left nude to such joint harassment,Must shiver—fall.ALEXANDER [with naive enthusiasm]It is a great alliance!NAPOLÉONWould it were one in blood as well as brain—Of family hopes, and sweet domestic bliss!ALEXANDERAh—is it to my sister you refer?NAPOLÉONThe launching of a lineal progenyHas been much pressed upon me, much, of late,For reasons which I will not dwell on now.Staid counsellors, my brother Joseph, too,Urge that I loose the Empress by divorce,And re-wive promptly for the country’s good.Princesses even have been named for me!—However this, to-day, is premature,And ’twixt ourselves alone....The Queen of Prussia must ere long be here:Berthier escorts her.  And the King, too, comes.She’s one whom you admire?ALEXANDER [reddening ingenuously]Yes.... FormerlyI had—did feel that some faint fascinationVaguely adorned her form.  And, to be plain,Certain reports have been calumnious,And wronged an honest woman.NAPOLÉONAs I knew!But she is wearing thready: why, her yearsMust be full one-and-thirty, if she’s one.ALEXANDER [quickly]No, sire.  She’s twenty-nine.  If traits teach moreIt means that cruel memory gnaws at herAs fair inciter to that fatal warWhich broke her to the dust!... I do confess[Since now we speak on’t] that this sacrificePrussia is doomed to, still disquiets me.Unhappy King!  When I recall the oathsSworn him upon great Frederick’s sepulchre,And—and my promises to his sad Queen,It pricks me that his realm and revenuesShould be stript down to the mere half they were!NAPOLÉON [cooly]Believe me, ’tis but my regard for youWhich lets me leave him that!  Far easier ’twereTo leave him none at all.[He rises and goes to the window.]But here they are.No; it’s the Queen alone, with BerthierAs I directed.  Then the King will follow.ALEXANDERLet me, sire, urge your courtesy to bestowSome gentle words on her?NAPOLÉONAy, ay; I will.[Enter QUEEN LOUISA OF PRUSSIA on the arm of BERTHIER.  Sheappears in majestic garments and with a smile on her lips, sothat her still great beauty is impressive.  But her eyes beartraces of tears.  She accepts NAPOLÉON’S attentions with thestormily sad air of a wounded beauty.  Whilst she is beingreceived the KING arrives.  He is a plain, shy, honest-faced,awkward man, with a wrecked and solitary look.  His manner toNAPOLÉON is, nevertheless, dignified, and even stiff.The company move into the inner half of the room, where thetables are, and the folding-doors being shut, they seat themselvesat dinner, the QUEEN taking a place between NAPOLÉON and ALEXANDER.]NAPOLÉONMadame, I love magnificent attire;But in the present instance can but noteThat each bright knot and jewel less adornsThe brighter wearer than the wearer it!QUEEN [with a sigh]You praise one, sire, whom now the wanton worldHas learnt to cease from praising!  But such wordsFrom such a quarter are of worth no less.NAPOLÉONOf worth as candour, madame; not as gauge.Your reach in rarity outsoars my scope.Yet, do you know, a troop of my hussars,That last October day, nigh captured you?QUEENNay!  Never a single Frenchman did I see.NAPOLÉONNot less it was that you exposed yourself,And should have been protected.  But at Weimar,Had you but sought me, ’twould have bettered you.QUEENI had no zeal to meet you, sire, alas!NAPOLÉON [after a silence]And how at Memel do you sport with time?QUEENSport?  I!—I pore on musty chronicles,And muse on usurpations long forgot,And other historied dramas of high wrong!NAPOLÉONWhy con not annals of your own rich age?They treasure acts well fit for pondering.QUEENI am reminded too much of my ageBy having had to live in it.  May HeavenDefend me now, and my wan ghost anon,From conning it again!NAPOLÉONAlas, alas!Too grievous, this, for one who is yet a queen!QUEENNo; I have cause for vials more of grief.—Prussia was blind in blazoning her powerAgainst the Mage of Earth!...The embers of great Frederick’s deeds inflamed her:His glories swelled her to her ruining.Too well has she been punished!  [Emotion stops her.]ALEXANDER [in a low voice, looking anxiously at her]Say not so.You speak as all were lost.  Things are not thus!Such desperation has unreason in it,And bleeds the hearts that crave to comfort you.NAPOLÉON [to the King]I trust the treaty, further pondered, sire,Has consolations?KING [curtly]I am a luckless man;And muster strength to bear my lucklessnessWithout vain hope of consolations now.One thing, at least, I trust I have shown you, sireThatIprovoked not this calamity!At Anspach first my feud with you began—Anspach, my Eden, violated and shamedBy blushless tramplings of your legions there!NAPOLÉONIt’s rather late, methinks, to talk thus now.KING [with more choler]Never too late for truth and plainspeaking!NAPOLÉON [blandly]To your ally, the Tsar, I must refer you.He was it, and not I, who tempted youTo push for war, when Eylau must have shownYour every profit to have lain in peace.—He can indemn; yes, much or small; and may.KING [with a head-shake]I would make up, would well make up, my mindTo half my kingdom’s loss, could in such limbBut Magdeburg not lie.  Dear Magdeburg,Place of my heart-hold; THAT I would retain!NAPOLÉONOur words take not such pattern as is wontTo grace occasions of festivity.[He turns brusquely from the King.  The banquet proceeds with amore general conversation.  When finished a toast is proposed:“The Freedom of the Seas,” and drunk with enthusiasm.]SPIRIT SINISTERAnother hit at England and her tubs!I hear harsh echoes from her chalky chines.SPIRIT OF THE PITIESO heed not England now!  Still read the Queen.One grieves to see her spend her pretty spellsUpon the man who has so injured her.[They rise from table, and the folding-doors being opened they passinto the adjoining room.Here are now assembled MURAT, TALLEYRAND, KOURAKIN, KALKREUTH,BERTHIER, BESSIERES, CAULAINCOURT, LABANOFF, BENNIGSEN, and others.NAPOLÉON having spoken a few words here and there resumes hisconversation with QUEEN LOUISA, and parenthetically offers snuffto the COUNTESS VOSS, her lady-in-waiting.  TALLEYRAND, who hasobserved NAPOLÉON’S growing interest in the QUEEN, contrives toget near him.]TALLEYRAND [in a whisper]Sire, is it possible that you can bendTo let one woman’s fairness filch from youAll the resplendent fortune that attendsThe grandest victory of your grand career?[The QUEEN’S quick eye observes and flashes at the whisper, andshe obtains a word with the minister.]QUEEN [sarcastically]I should infer, dear Monsieur Talleyrand,Only two persons in the world regretMy having come to Tilsit.TALLEYRANDMadame, two?Can any!—who may such sad rascals be?QUEENYou, and myself, Prince.  [Gravely.]  Yes! myself and you.[TALLEYRAND’S face becomes impassive, and he does not reply.Soon the QUEEN prepares to leave, and NAPOLÉON rejoins her.]NAPOLÉON [taking a rose from a vase]Dear Queen, do pray accept this little tokenAs souvenir of me before you go?[He offers her the rose, with his hand on his heart.  Shehesitates, but accepts it.]QUEEN [impulsively, with waiting tears]Let Magdeburg come with it, sire!  O yes!NAPOLÉON [with sudden frigidity]It is for you to take what I can give.And I give this—no more.15[She turns her head to hide her emotion, and withdraws.  NAPOLÉONsteps up to her, and offers his arm.  She takes it silently, andhe perceives the tears on her cheeks.  They cross towards the ante-room, away from the other guests.]NAPOLÉON [softly]Still weeping, dearest lady!  Why is this?QUEEN [seizing his hand and pressing it]Your speeches darn the tearings of your sword!—Between us two, as man and woman now,Is’t even possible you question why!O why did not the Greatest of the Age—Of future ages—of the ages past,This one time win a woman’s worship—yea,For all her little life!NAPOLÉON [gravely]Know you, my FairThat I—ay, I—in this deserve your pity.—Some force within me, baffling mine intent,Harries me onward, whether I will or no.My star, my star is what’s to blame—not I.It is unswervable!QUEENThen now, alas!My duty’s done as mother, wife, and queen.—I’ll say no more—but that my heart is broken![Exeunt NAPOLÉON, QUEEN, and LADY-IN-WAITING.]SPIRIT OF THE YEARSHe spoke thus at the Bridge of Lodi.  Strange,He’s of the few in Europe who discernThe working of the Will.SPIRIT OF THE PITIESIf that be so,Better for Europe lacked he such discerning![NAPOLÉON returns to the room and joins TALLEYRAND.]NAPOLÉON [aside to his minister]My God, it was touch-and-go that time, Talleyrand!  She was withinan ace of getting over me.  As she stepped into the carriage shesaid in her pretty way, “O I have been cruelly deceived by you!”And when she sank down inside, not knowing I heard, she burst intosobs fit to move a statue.  The Devil take me if I hadn’t a goodmind to stop the horses, jump in, give her a good kissing, andagree to all she wanted.  Ha-ha, well; a miss is as good as a mile.Had she come sooner with those sweet, beseeching blue eyes of hers,who knows what might not have happened!  But she didn’t come sooner,and I have kept in my right mind.[The RUSSIAN EMPEROR, the KING OF PRUSSIA, and other guests advanceto bid adieu.  They depart severally.  When they are gone NAPOLÉONturns to TALLEYRAND.]Adhere, then, to the treaty as it stands:Change not therein a single article,But write it fair forthwith.[Exeunt NAPOLÉON, TALLEYRAND, and other ministers and officers inwaiting.[SHADE OF THE EARTHSome surly voice afar I heard nowOf an enisled Britannic quality;Wots any of the cause?SPIRIT IRONICPerchance I do!Britain is roused, in her slow, stolid style,By Bonaparte’s pronouncement at BerlinAgainst her cargoes, commerce, life itself;And now from out her water citadelBlows counterblasting “Orders.”  Rumours tell.RUMOUR I“From havens of fierce France and her allies,With poor or precious freight of merchandizeWhoso adventures, England pounds as prize!”RUMOUR IIThereat Napoléon names her, furiously,Curst Oligarch, Arch-pirate of the sea,Who shall lack room to live while liveth he!CHORUS OF THE PITIES [aerial music]And peoples are enmeshed in new calamity![Curtain of Evening Shades.]

LONDON.  FOX’S LODGINGS, ARLINGTON STREET[FOX, the Foreign Secretary in the new Ministry of All-the-Talents,sits at a table writing.  He is a stout, swarthy man, with shaggyeyebrows, and his breathing is somewhat obstructed.  His clotheslook as though they had been slept in.  TROTTER, his privatesecretary, is writing at another table near.  A servant enters.]

SERVANTAnother stranger presses to see you, sir.

FOX [without raising his eyes]Oh, another.  What’s he like?

SERVANTA foreigner, sir; though not so out-at-elbows as might be thoughtfrom the denomination.  He says he’s from Gravesend, having latelyleft Paris, and that you sent him a passport.  He comes with apolice-officer.

FOXAh, to be sure.  I remember.  Bring him in, and tell the officerto wait outside.  [Servant goes out.]  Trotter, will you leave usfor a few minutes?  But be within hail.[The secretary retires, and the servant shows in a man who callshimself GUILLET DE GEVRILLIÈRE—a tall, thin figure of thirty,with restless eyes.  The door being shut behind him, he is leftalone with the minister.  FOX points to a seat, leans back, andsurveys his visitor.]

GEVRILLIÈREThanks to you, sir, for this high privilegeOf hailing England, and of entering here.Without a fore-extended confidenceLike this of yours, my plans would not have sped.  [A Pause.]Europe, alas! sir, has her waiting footUpon the sill of further slaughter-scenes!

FOXI fear it is so!—In your lines you wrote,I think, that you are a true Frenchman born?

GEVRILLIÈREI did, sir.FOXHow contrived you, then, to cross?

GEVRILLIÈREIt was from Embden that I shipped for Gravesend,In a small sailer called the “Toby,” sir,Masked under Prussian colours.  Embden I reachedOn foot, on horseback, and by sundry shifts,From Paris over Holland, secretly.

FOXAnd you are stored with tidings of much pith,Whose tenour would be priceless to the state?

GEVRILLIÈREI am.  It is, in brief, no more nor lessThan means to mitigate and even endThese welfare-wasting wars; ay, usher inA painless spell of peace.

FOXPrithee speak on.No statesman can desire it more than I.

GEVRILLIÈRE [looking to see that the door is shut]No nation, sir, can live its natural life,Or think its thoughts in these days unassailed,No crown-capt head enjoy tranquillity.The fount of such high spring-tide of disorder,Fevered disquietude, and forceful death,Is One,—a single man.  He—need I name?—The ruler is of France.

FOXWell, in the pastI fear that it has liked so.  But we seeGood reason still to hope that broadening views,Politer wisdom now is helping himTo saner guidance of his arrogant car.

GEVRILLIÈREThe generous hope will never be fulfilled!Ceasing to bluff, then ceases he to be.None sees that written largelier than himself.

FOXThen what may be the valued revelationThat you can unlock in such circumstance?Sir, I incline to spell you as a spy,And not the honest help for honest menYou gave you out to be!GEVRILLIÈREI beg, sir,To spare me that suspicion.  Never a thoughtCould be more groundless.  Solemnly I vowThat notwithstanding what his signals showThe Emperor of France is as I say.—Yet bring I good assurance, and declareA medicine for all bruised Europe’s sores!

FOX [impatiently]Well, parley to the point, for I confessNo new negotiation do I noteThat you can open up to work such cure.

GEVRILLIÈREThe sovereign remedy for an ill effectIs the extinction of its evil cause.Safely and surely how to compass thisI have the weighty honour to disclose,Certain immunities being guaranteedBy those your power can influence, and yourself.

FOX [astonished]Assassination?

GEVRILLIÈREI care  not for names!A deed’s true name is as its purpose is.The lexicon of Liberty and PeaceDefines not this deed as assassination;Though maybe it is writ so in the tongueOf courts and universal tyranny.FOXWhy brought you this proposal here to me?

GEVRILLIÈREMy knowledge of your love of things humane,Things free, things fair, of truth, of tolerance,Right, justice, national felicity,Prompted belief and hope in such a man!—The matter is by now well forwarded,A house at Plassy hired as pivot-pointFrom which the sanct intention can be worked,And soon made certain.  To our good alliesNo risk attaches; merely to ourselves.

FOX [touching a private bell]Sir, your unconscienced hardihood confounds me.And your mind’s measure of my characterInsults it sorely.  By your late-sent linesOf specious import, by your bland address,I have been led to prattle hopefullyWith a cut-throat confessed![The head constable and the secretary enter at the same moment.]Ere worse befall,Sir, up and get you gone most dexterously!Conduct this man: lose never sight of him [to the officer]Till haled aboard some anchor-weighing craftBound to remotest coasts from us and France.

GEVRILLIÈRE [unmoved]How you may handle me concerns me little.The project will as roundly ripe itselfWithout as with me.  Trusty souls remain,Though my far bones bleach white on austral shores!—I thank you for the audience.  Long ere thisI might have reft your life!  Ay, notice here—[He produces a dagger; which is snatched from him.]They need not have done that!  Even had you risenTo wrestle with, insult, strike, pinion me,It would have lain unused.  In hands like mineAnd my allies’, the man of peace is safe,Treat as he may our corporal tenementIn his misreading of a moral code.[Exeunt GEVRILLIÈRE and the constable.]

FOXTrotter, indeed you well may stare at me!I look warm, eh?—and I am windless, too;I have sufficient reason to be so.That dignified and pensive gentlemanWas a bold bravo, waiting for his chance.He sketched a scheme for murdering Bonaparte,Either—as in my haste I understood—By shooting from a window as he passed,Or by some other wry and stealthy meansThat haunt sad brains which brood on despotism,But lack the tools to justly cope therewith!...On later thoughts I feel not fully sureIf, in my ferment, I did right in this.No; hail at once the man in charge of him,And give the word that he is to be detained.[The secretary goes out.  FOX walks to the window in deepreflection till the secretary returns.]

SECRETARYI was in time, sir.  He has been detained.

FOXNow what does strict state-honour ask of me?—No less than that I bare this poppling plotTo the French ruler and our fiercest foe!—Maybe ’twas but a hoax to pocket pay;And yet it can mean more...The man’s indifference to his own vague doomBeamed out as one exalted trait in him,And showed the altitude of his rash dream!—Well, now I’ll get me on to Downing Street,There to draw up a note to TalleyrandRetailing him the facts.—What signatureSubscribed this desperate fellow when he wrote?

SECRETARY“Guillet de la Gevrillière.”  Here it stands.

FOXDoubtless it was a false one.  Come along.  [Looking out the window.]Ah—here’s Sir Francis Vincent: he’ll go with us.Ugh, what a twinge!  Time signals that he drawsTowards the twelfth stroke of my working-day!I fear old England soon must voice her speechWith Europe through another mouth than mine!

SECRETARYI trust not, sir.  Though you should rest awhile.The very servants half are invalidFrom the unceasing labours of your post,And these cloaked visitors of every climeThat market on your magnanimityTo gain an audience morning, night, and noon,Leaving you no respite.

FOX’Tis true; ’tis true.—How I shall love my summer holidayAt pleasant Saint-Ann’s Hill![He leans on the secretary’s arm, and they go out.]

THE ROUTE BETWEEN LONDON AND PARIS[A view now nocturnal, now diurnal, from on high over the Straitsof Dover, and stretching from city to city.  By night Paris andLondon seem each as a little swarm of lights surrounded by a halo;by day as a confused glitter of white and grey.  The Channelbetween them is as a mirror reflecting the sky, brightly orfaintly, as the hour may be.]

SPIRIT OF THE PITIESWhat mean these couriers shooting shuttlewiseTo Paris and to London, turn and turn?

RUMOURS [chanting in antiphons]IThe aforesaid tidings fro the minister, spokesman in England’scause to states afar,

IITraverse the waters borne by one of such; and thereto Bonaparte’sresponses are:I“The principles of honour and of truth which ever actuate thesender’s mind

II“Herein are written largely!  Take our thanks: we read thatthis conjuncture undesigned

I“Unfolds felicitous means of showing you that still our eyesare set, as yours, on peace,

II“To which great end the Treaty of Amiens must be the ground-work of our amities.”

IFrom London then: “The path to amity the King of Englandstudies to pursue;

II“With Russia hand in hand he is yours to close the longconvulsions thrilling Europe through.”

IStill fare the shadowy missioners across, by Dover-road andCalais Channel-track,

IIFrom Thames-side towers to Paris palace-gates; from Parisleisurely to London back.

ITill thus speaks France: “Much grief it gives us that, beingpledged to treat, one Emperor with one King,

II“You yet have struck a jarring counternote and tone that keysnot with such promising.

I“In these last word, then, of this pregnant parle; I trust Imay persuade your Excellency

II“That in no circumstance, on no pretence, a party to our pact canRussia be.”

SPIRIT SINISTERFortunately for the manufacture of corpses by machinery Napoléonsticks to this veto, and so wards off the awkward catastrophe ofa general peace descending upon Europe.  Now England.

RUMOURS [continuing]IThereon speeds down through Kent and Picardy, evenly as somesouthing sky-bird’s shade:

II“We gather not from your Imperial lines a reason why our wordsshould be reweighed.I“We hold Russia not as our ally that is to be: she stands fully-plighted so;

II“Thus trembles peace upon this balance-point: will you thatRussia be let in or no?”

IThen France rolls out rough words across the strait: “To treatwith you confederate with the Tsar,

II“Presumes us sunk in sloughs of shamefulness from which we yetstand gloriously afar!

I“The English army must be Flanders-fed, and entering Picardy withpompous prance,

II“To warrant such!  Enough.  Our comfort is, the crime of furtherstrife lies not with France.”

SPIRIT OF THE PITIESAlas! what prayer will save the struggling lands,Whose lives are ninepins to these bowling hands?

CHORUS OF RUMOURSFrance secretly with—Russia plights her troth!Britain, that lonely isle, is slurred by both.

SPIRIT SINISTERIt is as neat as an uncovered check at chess!  You may now markFox’s blank countenance at finding himself thus rewarded for thegood turn done to Bonaparte, and at the extraordinary conduct ofhis chilly friend the Muscovite.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIESHis hand so trembles it can scarce retainThe quill wherewith he lets Lord Yarmouth knowReserve is no more needed!

SPIRIT IRONICNow enters another character of this remarkable little piece—LordLauderdale—and again the messengers fly!

SPIRIT OF THE PITIESBut what strange figure, pale and noiseless, comes,By us perceived, unrecognized by those,Into the very closet and retreatOf England’s Minister?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARSThe Tipstaff heOf the Will, the Many-masked, my good friend Death.—The statesman’s feeble form you may perceiveNow hustled into the Invisible,And the unfinished game of DynastiesLeft to proceed without him!

SPIRIT OF THE PITIESHere, then, endsMy hope for Europe’s reason-wrought repose!He was the friend of peace—did his great bestTo shed her balms upon humanity;And now he’s gone!  No substitute remains.

SPIRIT IRONICAy; the remainder of the episode is frankly farcical.  Negotiationsare again affected; but finally you discern Lauderdale applying forpassports; and the English Parliament declares to the nation thatpeace with France cannot be made.

RUMOURS [concluding]IThe smouldering dudgeon of the Prussian king, meanwhile, upon thehorizon’s rim afar

IIBursts into running flame, that all his signs of friendliness weremet by moves for war.

IAttend and hear, for hear ye faintly may, his manifesto made atErfurt town,

IIThat to arms only dares he now confide the safety and the honourof his crown!

SPIRIT OF THE YEARSDraw down the curtain, then, and overscreenThis too-protracted verbal fencing-scene;And let us turn to clanging foot and horse,Ordnance, and all the enginry of Force![Clouds close over the perspective.]

THE STREETS OF BERLIN[It is afternoon, and the thoroughfares are crowded with citizensin an excited and anxious mood.  A central path is left open forsome expected arrival.There enters on horseback a fair woman, whose rich brown curlsstream flutteringly in the breeze, and whose long blue habitflaps against the flank of her curvetting white mare.  She isthe renowned LOUISA, QUEEN OF PRUSSIA, riding at the head of aregiment of hussars and wearing their uniform.  As she prancesalong the thronging citizens acclaim her enthusiastically.]

SPIRIT OF THE PITIESWho is this fragile fair, in fighting trim?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARSShe is the pride of Prussia, whose resolveGives ballast to the purpose of her spouse,And holds him to what men call governing.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIESQueens have engaged in war; but war’s loud tradeRings with a roar unnatural, fitful, forced,Practised by woman’s hands!

SPIRIT OF THE YEARSOf her viewThe enterprise is that of scores of men,The strength but half-a-ones.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIESWould fate had ruledThe valour had been his, hers but the charm!

SPIRIT OF RUMOURBut he has nothing on’t, and she has all.The shameless satires of the bulletinsdispatched to Paris, thence the wide world through,Disturb the dreams of her by those who love her,And thus her brave adventurers for the realmHave blurred her picture, soiled her gentleness,And wrought her credit harm.

FIRST CITIZEN [vociferously]Yes, by God: send and ultimatum to Paris, by God; that’s what we’lldo, by God.  The Confederation of the Rhine was the evil thought ofan evil man bent on ruining us!

SECOND CITIZENThis country double-faced and double-tongued,This France, or rather say, indeed, this Man—[Peoples are honest dealers in the mass]—This man, to sign a stealthy scroll with RussiaThat shuts us off from all indemnities,While swearing faithful friendship with our King,And, still professing our safe wardenry,To fatten other kingdoms at our cost,Insults us grossly, and makes Europe clangWith echoes of our wrongs.  The little statesOf this antique and homely German landAre severed from their blood-allies and kin—Hereto of one tradition, interest, hope—In calling lord this rank adventurer,Who’ll thrust them as a sword against ourselves.—Surely Great Frederick sweats within his tomb!

THIRD CITIZENWell, we awake, though we have slumbered long,And She is sent by Heaven to kindle us.[The QUEEN approaches to pass back again with her suite.  Thevociferous applause is repeated.  They regard her as she nears.]To cry her Amazon, a blusterer,A brazen comrade of the bold dragoonsWhose uniform she dons!  Her, whose each actShows but a mettled modest woman’s zeal,Without a hazard of her dignityOr moment’s sacrifice of seemliness,To fend off ill from home!

FOURTH CITIZEN [entering]The tidings fly that Russian AlexanderDeclines with emphasis to ratifyThe pact of his ambassador with France,And that the offer made the English KingTo compensate the latter at our costHas not been taken.THIRD CITIZENAnd it never will be!Thus evil does not always flourish, faith.Throw down the gage while god is fair to us;He may be foul anon![A pause.]

FIFTH CITIZEN [entering]Our ambassador Lucchesini is already leaving Paris.  He could standthe Emperor no longer, so the Emperor takes his place, has decidedto order his snuff by the ounce and his candles by the pound, lesthe should not be there long enough to use more.[The QUEEN goes by, and they gaze at here and at the escort ofsoldiers.]Haven’t we soldiers?  Haven’t we the Duke of Brunswick to command’em?  Haven’t we provisions, hey?  Haven’t we fortresses and anElbe, to bar the bounce of an invader?[The cavalcade passes out of sight and the crowd draws off.]FIRST CITIZENBy God, I must to beer and ’bacco, to soften my rage![Exeunt citizens.]

SPIRIT OF THE YEARSSo doth the Will objectify ItselfIn likeness of a sturdy people’s wrath,Which takes no count of the new trends of time,Trusting ebbed glory in a present need.—What if their strength should equal not their fire,And their devotion dull their vigilance?—Uncertainly, by fits, the Will doth workIn Brunswick’s blood, their chief, as in themselves;It ramifies in streams that intermitAnd make their movement vague, old-fashioned, slowTo foil the modern methods counterposed![Evening descends on the city, and it grows dusk.  The soldiersbeing dismissed from duty, some young officers in a frolic ofdefiance halt, draw their swords and whet them on the steps ofthe FRENCH AMBASSADOR’S residence as they pass.  The noise ofwhetting is audible through the street.]

CHORUS OF THE PITIES [aerial music]The soul of a nation distrestIs aflame,And heaving with eager unrestIn its aimTo assert its old prowess, and stouten its chronicled fame!

SEMICHORUS IIt boils in a boisterous thrillThrough the mart,Unconscious well-nigh as the WillOf its part:Would it wholly might be so, and feel not the forthcoming smart!

SEMICHORUS IIIn conclaves no voice of reflectionIs heard,King, Councillors, grudge circumspectionA word,And victory is visioned, and seemings as facts are averred.

CHORUSYea, the soul of a nation distrestIs aflame,And heaving with eager unrestIn its aimAt supreme desperations to blazon the national name![Midnight strikes, lights are extinguished one by one, and thescene disappears.]

THE FIELD OF JENA[Day has just dawned through a grey October haze.  The French,with their backs to the nebulous light, loom out and showthemselves to be already under arms; LANNES holding the centre,NEY the right, SOULT the extreme right, and AUGEREAU the left.The Imperial Guard and MURAT’S cavalry are drawn up on theLandgrafenberg, behind the centre of the French position.  Ina valley stretching along to the rear of this height flowsnorthward towards the Elbe the little river Saale, on whichthe town of Jena stands.On the irregular plateaux in front of the French lines, and almostclose to the latter, are the Prussians un TAUENZIEN; and away ontheir right rear towards Weimar the bulk of the army under PRINCEHOHENLOHE.  The DUKE OF BRUNSWICK [father of the Princess ofWales] is twelve miles off with his force at Auerstadt, in thevalley of the Ilm.Enter NAPOLÉON, and men bearing torches who escort him.  He movesalong the front of his troops, and is lost to view behind themist and surrounding objects.  But his voice is audible.]

NAPOLÉONKeep you good guard against their cavalry,In past repute the formidablest known,And such it may be now; so asks our heed.Receive it, then, in square, unflinchingly.—Remember, men, last year you captured Ulm,So make no doubt that you will vanquish these!

SOLDIERSLong live the Emperor!  Advance, advance!

DUMB SHOWAlmost immediately glimpses reveal that LANNES’ corps is movingforward, and amid an unbroken clatter of firelocks spreads outfurther and wider upon the stretch of country in front of theLandgrafenberg.  The Prussians, surprised at discerning in thefog such masses of the enemy close at hand, recede towards theIlm.From PRINCE HOHENLOHE, who is with the body of the Prussians onthe Weimar road to the south, comes perspiring the bulk of theinfantry to rally the retreating regiments of TAUENZIEN, and hehastens up himself with the cavalry and artillery.  The actionis renewed between him and NEY as the clocks of Jena strike ten.But AUGEREAU is seen coming to Ney’s assistance on one flank ofthe Prussians, SOULT bearing down on the other, while NAPOLÉONon the Landgrafenberg orders the Imperial Guard to advance.  Thedoomed Prussians are driven back, this time more decisively,falling in great numbers and losing many as prisoners as theyreel down the sloping land towards the banks of the Ilm behindthem.  GENERAL RUCHEL, in a last despairing effort to rally,faces the French onset in person and alone.  He receives a bulletthrough the chest and falls dead.The crisis of the struggle is reached, though the battle is notover.  NAPOLÉON, discerning from the Landgrafenberg that thedecisive moment has come, directs MURAT to sweep forward with allhis cavalry.  It engages the shattered Prussians, surrounds them,and cuts them down by thousands.From behind the horizon, a dozen miles off, between the din of gunsin the visible battle, there can be heard an ominous roar, as of asecond invisible battle in progress there.  Generals and otherofficers look at each other and hazard conjectures between whiles,the French with exultation, the Prussians gloomily.

HOHENLOHEThat means the Duke of Brunswick, I conceive,Impacting on the enemy’s further forceLed by, they say, Davout and Bernadotte.God grant his star less lurid rays then ours,Or this too pregnant, hoarsely-groaning dayShall, ere its loud delivery be done,Have twinned disasters to the fatherlandThat fifty years will fail to sepulchre!

Enter a straggler on horseback.

STRAGGLERPrince, I have circuited by Auerstadt,And bring ye dazzling tidings of the fight,Which, if report by those who saw’t be true,Has raged thereat from clammy day-dawn on,And left us victors!

HOHENLOHEThitherward go I,And patch the mischief wrought upon us here!

Enter a second and then a third straggler.Well, wet-faced men, whence come ye?  What d’ye bring?

STRAGGLER IIYour Highness, I rode straight from Hassenhausen,Across the stream of battle as it boiledBetwixt that village and the banks of Saale,And such the turmoil that no man could speakOn what the issue was!

HOHENLOHE [To Straggler III]Can you add aught?

STRAGGLER IIINothing that’s clear, your Highness.

HOHENLOHEMan, your mienIs that of one who knows, but will not say.Detain him here.

STRAGGLER IIIThe blackness of my news,Your Highness, darks my sense!... I saw this much:His charging grenadiers, received in the faceA grape-shot stroke that gouged out half of it,Proclaiming then and there his life fordone.

HOHENLOHEFallen?  Brunswick!  Reed in council, rock in fire...Ah, this he looked for.  Many a time of lateHas he, by some strange gift of foreknowing,Declared his fate was hovering in such wise!

STRAGGLER IIIHis aged form being borne beyond the strife,The gallant Moellendorf, in flushed despair,Swore he would not survive; and, pressing on,He, too, was slaughtered.  Patriotic rageBrimmed marshals’ breasts and men’s.  The King himselfFought like the commonest.  But nothing served.His horse is slain; his own doom yet unknown.Prince William, too, is wounded.  Brave SchmettauIs broke; himself disabled.  All give way,And regiments crash like trees at felling-time!

HOHENLOHENo more.  We match it here.  The yielding linesStill sweep us backward.  Backward we must go![Exeunt HOHENLOHE, Staff, stragglers, etc.]

The Prussian retreat from Jena quickens to a rout, many thousandstaken prisoners by MURAT, who pursues them to Weimar, where theinhabitants fly shrieking through the streets.The October day closes in to evening.  By this time the troopsretiring with the King of Prussia from the second battlefieldof Auerstadt have intersected RUCHEL’S and HOHENLOHE’S flyingbattalions from Jena.  The crossing streams of fugitives strikepanic into each other, and the tumult increases with thethickening darkness till night renders the scene invisible,and nothing remains but a confused diminishing noise, and fitfullights here and there.

BERLIN.  A ROOM OVERLOOKING A PUBLIC PLACE[A fluttering group of ladies is gathered at the window, gazingout and conversing anxiously.  The time draws towards noon, whenthe clatter of a galloping horse’s hoofs is heard echoing up thelong Potsdamer-Strasse, and presently turning into the Leipziger-Strasse reaches the open space commanded by the ladies’ outlook.It ceases before a Government building opposite them, and therider disappears into the courtyard.]

FIRST LADYYes: surely he is a courier from the field!

SECOND LADYShall we not hasten down, and take from himThe doom his tongue may deal us?

THIRD LADYWe shall catchAs soon by watching here as hastening henceThe tenour of his new.  [They wait.]  Ah, yes: see—seeThe bulletin is straightway to be nailed!He was, then, from the field....[They wait on while the bulletin is affixed.]

SECOND LADYI cannot scan the words the scroll proclaims;Peer as I will, these too quick-thronging dreadsBring water to the eyes.  Grant us, good Heaven,That victory be where she is needed mostTo prove Thy goodness!... What do you make of it?

THIRD LADY [reading, through a glass]“The battle strains us sorely; but resolveMay save us even now.  Our last attackHas failed, with fearful loss.  Once more we strive.”[A long silence in the room.  Another rider is heard approaching,above the murmur of the gathering citizens.  The second ladylooks out.]

SECOND LADYA straggler merely he.... But they decide,At last, to post his news, wild-winged or no.

THIRD LADY [reading again through her glass]“The Duke of Brunswick, leading on a charge,Has met his death-doom.  Schmettau, too, is slain;Prince William wounded.  But we stand as yet,Engaging with the last of our reserves.”[The agitation in the street communicates itself to the room.Some of the ladies weep silently as they wait, much longer thistime.  Another horseman is at length heard clattering into thePlatz, and they lean out again with painful eagerness.]

SECOND LADYAn adjutant of Marshal Moellendorf’sIf I define him rightly.  Read—O read!—Though reading draw them from their socket-holesUse your eyes now!

THIRD LADY [glass up]As soon as ’tis affixed....Ah—this means much!  The people’s air and gaitToo well betray disaster.  [Reading.]  “Berliners,The King has lost the battle!  Bear it well.The foremost duty of a citizenIs to maintain a brave tranquillity.This is what I, the Governor, demandOf men and women now.... The King lives still.”[They turn from the window and sit in a silence broken only bymonosyllabic words, hearing abstractedly the dismay withoutthat has followed the previous excitement and hope.The stagnation is ended by a cheering outside, of subduedemotional quality, mixed with sounds of grief.  They againlook forth.  QUEEN LOUISA is leaving the city with a verysmall escort, and the populace seem overcome.  They straintheir eyes after her as she disappears.  Enter fourth lady.]FIRST LADYHow does she bear it?  Whither does she go?

FOURTH LADYShe goes to join the King at Custrin, thereTo abide events—as we.  Her heroismSo schools her sense of her calamitiesAs out of grief to carve new queenliness,And turn a mobile mien to statuesque,Save for a sliding tear.[The ladies leave the window severally.]

SPIRIT IRONICSo the Will plays at flux and reflux still.This monarchy, one-half whose pedestalIs built of Polish bones, has bones home-made!Let the fair woman bear it.  Poland did.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARSMeanwhile the mighty Emperor nears apace,And soon will glitter at the city gatesWith palpitating drums, and breathing brass,And rampant joyful-jingling retinue.[An evening mist cloaks the scene.]

THE SAME[It is a brilliant morning, with a fresh breeze, and not a cloud.The open Platz and the adjoining streets are filled with densecrowds of citizens, in whose upturned faces curiosity hasmastered consternation and grief.Martial music is heard, at first faint, then louder, followedby a trampling of innumerable horses and a clanking of arms andaccoutrements.  Through a street on the right hand of the viewfrom the windows come troops of French dragoons heralding thearrival of BONAPARTE.Re-enter the room hurriedly and cross to the windows severalladies as before, some in tears.]

FIRST LADYThe kingdom late of Prussia, can it beThat thus it disappears?—a patriot-cry,A battle, bravery, ruin; and no more?

SECOND LADYThank God the Queen’s gone!

THIRD LADYTo what sanctuary?From earthquake shocks there is no sheltering cell!—Is this what men call conquest?  Must it closeAs historied conquests do, or be annulledBy modern reason and the urbaner sense?—Such issue none would venture to predict,Yet folly ’twere to nourish foreshaped fearsAnd suffer in conjecture and in deed.—If verily our country be dislimbed,Then at the mercy of his dominationThe face of earth will lie, and vassal kingsStand waiting on himself the Overking,Who ruling rules all; till desperatenessSting and excite a bonded last resistance,And work its own release.

SECOND LADYHe comes even nowFrom sacrilege.  I learn that, since the fight,In marching here by Potsdam yesterday,Sans-Souci Palace drew his curious feet,Where even great Frederick’s tomb was bared to him.

FOURTH LADYAll objects on the Palace—cared for, keptEven as they were when our arch-monarch died—The books, the chair, the inkhorn, and the penHe quizzed with flippant curiosity;And entering where our hero’s bones are urnedHe seized the sword and standards treasured there,And with a mixed effrontery and regardDeclared they should be all dispatched to ParisAs gifts to the Hotel des Invalides.

THIRD LADYSuch rodomontade is cheap: what matters it![A galaxy of marshals, forming Napoléon’s staff, now enters thePlatz immediately before the windows.  In the midst rides theEMPEROR himself.  The ladies are silent.  The procession passesalong the front until it reaches the entrance to the Royal Palace.At the door NAPOLÉON descends from his horse and goes into thebuilding amid the resonant trumpetings of his soldiers and thesilence of the crowd.]

SECOND LADY [impressed]O why does such a man debase himselfBy countenancing loud scurrilityAgainst a queen who cannot make reprise!A power so ponderous needs no littleness—The last resort of feeble desperates![Enter fifth lady.]

FIFTH LADY [breathlessly]Humiliation grows acuter still.He placards rhetoric to his soldieryOn their distress of us and our allies,Declaring he’ll not stack away his armsTill he has choked the remaining foes of FranceIn their own gainful glut.—Whom means he, think you?

FIRST LADYUs?

THIRD LADYRussia?  Austria?

FIFTH LADYNeither: England.—Yea,Her he still holds the master mischief-mind,And marrer of the countries’ quietude,By exercising untold tyrannyOver all the ports and seas.

SECOND LADYThen England’s doomed!When he has overturned the Russian rule,England comes next for wrack.  They say that know!...Look—he has entered by the Royal doorsAnd makes the Palace his.—Now let us go!—Our course, alas! is—whither?[Exeunt ladies.  The curtain drops temporarily.]

SEMICHORUS I OF IRONIC SPIRITS [aerial music]Deeming himself omnipotentWith the Kings of the Christian continent,To warden the waves was his further bent.

SEMICHORUS IIBut the weaving Will from eternity,[Hemming them in by a circling sea]Evolved the fleet of the Englishry.

SEMICHORUS IThe wane of his armaments ill-advised,At Trafalgar, to a force despised,Was a wound which never has cicatrized.

SEMICHORUS IIThis, O this is the cramp that grips!And freezes the Emperor’s finger-tipsFrom signing a peace with the Land of Ships.

CHORUSThe Universal-empire plotDemands the rule of that wave-walled spot;And peace with England cometh not!

THE SCENE REOPENS[A lurid gloom now envelops the Platz and city; and Bonaparteis heard as from the Palace:

VOICE OF NAPOLÉONThese monstrous violations being in trainOf law and national integritiesBy English arrogance in things marine,[Which dares to capture simple merchant-craft,In honest quest of harmless merchandize,For crime of kinship to a hostile power]Our vast, effectual, and majestic strokesIn this unmatched campaign, enable meTo bar from commerce with the ContinentAll keels of English frame.  Hence I decree:—

SPIRIT OF RUMOURThis outlines his renowned “Berlin Decree.”Maybe he meditates its scheme in sleep,Or hints it to his suite, or syllables itWhile shaping, to his scribes.

VOICE OF NAPOLÉONAll England’s ports to suffer strict blockade;All traffic with that land to cease forthwith;All natives of her isles, wherever met,To be detained as windfalls of the war.All chattels of her make, material, mould,To be good prize wherever pounced upon:And never a bottom hailing from her shoresBut shall be barred from every haven here.This for her monstrous harms to human rights,And shameless sauciness to neighbour powers!

SPIRIT SINISTERI spell herein that our excellently high-coloured drama is notplayed out yet!

SPIRIT OF THE YEARSNor will it be for many a month of moans,And summer shocks, and winter-whitened bones.[The night gets darker, and the Palace outlines are lost.]

TILSIT AND THE RIVER NIEMEN[The scene is viewed from the windows of BONAPARTE’S temporaryquarters.  Some sub-officers of his suite are looking out uponit.It is the day after midsummer, about one o’clock.  A multitudeof soldiery and spectators lines each bank of the broad riverwhich, stealing slowly north-west, bears almost exactly in itsmidst a moored raft of bonded timber.  On this as a floor standsa gorgeous pavilion of draped woodwork, having at each side,facing the respective banks of the stream, a round-headed doorwayrichly festooned.  The cumbersome erection acquires from thecurrent a rhythmical movement, as if it were breathing, and thebreeze now and then produces a shiver on the face of the stream.]

DUMB SHOWOn the south-west or Prussian side rides the EMPEROR NAPOLÉONin uniform, attended by the GRAND DUKE OF BERG, the PRINCE OFNEUFCHÂTEL, MARSHAL BESSIERES, DUROC Marshal of the Palace, andCAULAINCOURT Master of the Horse.  The EMPEROR looks well, but isgrowing fat.  They embark on an ornamental barge in front of them,which immediately puts off.  It is now apparent to the watchersthat a precisely similar enactment has simultaneously taken placeon the opposite or Russian bank, the chief figure being theEMPEROR ALEXANDER—a graceful, flexible man of thirty, with acourteous manner and good-natured face.  He has come out froman inn on that side accompanied by the GRAND DUKE CONSTANTINE,GENERAL BENNIGSEN, GENERAL OUWAROFF, PRINCE LABANOFF, and ADJUTANT-GENERAL COUNT LIEVEN.The two barges draw towards the raft, reaching the opposite sidesof it about the same time, amidst discharges of cannon.  EachEmperor enters the door that faces him, and meeting in the centreof the pavilion they formally embrace each other.  They retiretogether to the screened interior, the suite of each remaining inthe outer half of the pavilion.More than an hour passes while they are thus invisible.  The Frenchofficers who have observed the scene from the lodging of NAPOLÉONwalk about idly, and ever and anon go curiously to the windows,again to watch the raft.

CHORUS OF THE YEARS [aerial music]The prelude to this smooth scene—mark well!—were the shockswhereof the times gave tokenVaguely to us ere last year’s snows shut over Lithuanian pineand pool,Which we told at the fall of the faded leaf, when the pride ofPrussia was bruised and broken,And the Man of Adventure sat in the seat of the Man of Methodand rigid Rule.

SEMICHORUS I OF THE PITIESSnows incarnadined were thine, O Eylau, field of the wide whitespaces,And frozen lakes, and frozen limbs, and blood iced hard as it leftthe veins:Steel-cased squadrons swathed in cloud-drift, plunging to doomthrough pathless places,And forty thousand dead and near dead, strewing the early-lightedplains.Friedland to these adds its tale of victims, its midnight marchesand hot collisions,Its plunge, at his word, on the enemy hooped by the bended riverand famed Mill stream,As he shatters the moves of the loose-knit nations to curb hisexploitful soul’s ambitions,And their great Confederacy dissolves like the diorama of a dream.

DUMB SHOW [continues]NAPOLÉON and ALEXANDER emerge from their seclusion, and each isbeheld talking to the suite of his companion apparently inflattering compliment.  An effusive parting, which signifiesitself to be but temporary, is followed by their return to theriver shores amid the cheers of the spectators.NAPOLÉON and his marshals arrive at the door of his quarters andenter, and pass out of sight to other rooms than that of theforeground in which the observers are loitering.  Dumb show ends.[A murmured conversation grows audible, carried on by two personsin the crowd beneath the open windows.  Their dress being thenative one, and their tongue unfamiliar, they seem to the officersto be merely inhabitants gossiping; and their voices continueunheeded.]

FIRST ENGLISH SPY14[below]Did you get much for me to send on?

SECOND ENGLISH SPYMuch; and startling, too.  “Why are we at war?” says Napoléon whenthey met.—“Ah—why!” said t’other.—“Well,” said Boney, “I amfighting you only as an ally of the English, and you are simplyserving them, and not yourself, in fighting me.”—“In that case,”says Alexander, “we shall soon be friends, for I owe her as greata grudge as you.”

FIRST SPYDammy, go that length, did they!

SECOND SPYThen they plunged into the old story about English selfishness,and greed, and duplicity.  But the climax related to Spain, andit amounted to this: they agreed that the Bourbons of the Spanishthrone should be made to abdicate, and Bonaparte’s relations setup as sovereigns instead of them.

FIRST SPYSomebody must ride like hell to let our Cabinet know!

SECOND SPYI have written it down in cipher, not to trust to memory, and toguard against accidents.—They also agree that France should havethe Pope’s dominions, Malta, and Egypt; that Napoléon’s brotherJoseph should have Sicily as well as Naples, and that they wouldpartition the Ottoman Empire between them.

FIRST SPYCutting up Europe like a plum-pudding.  Par nobile fratrum!

SECOND SPYThen they worthy pair came to poor Prussia, whom Alexander, theysay, was anxious about, as he is under engagements to her.  Itseems that Napoléon agrees to restore to the King as many of hisstates as will cover Alexander’s promise, so that the Tsar mayfeel free to strike out in this new line with his new friend.

FIRST SPYSurely this is but surmise?

SECOND SPYNot at all.  One of the suite overheard, and I got round him.  Therewas much more, which I did not learn.  But they are going to sootheand flatter the unfortunate King and Queen by asking them to a banquethere.

FIRST SPYSuch a spirited woman will never come!

SECOND SPYWe shall see.  Whom necessity compels needs must: and she has gonethrough an Iliad of woes!

FIRST SPYIt is this Spanish business that will stagger England, by God!  Andnow to let her know it.

FRENCH SUBALTERN [looking out above]What are those townspeople talking about so earnestly, I wonder?  Thelingo of this place has an accent akin to English.

SECOND SUBALTERNNo doubt because the races are both Teutonic.[The spies observe that they are noticed, and disappear in thecrowd.  The curtain drops.]

THE SAME[The midsummer sun is low, and a long table in the aforeshownapartment is laid out for a dinner, among the decorations beingbunches of the season’s roses.At the vacant end of the room [divided from the dining end byfolding-doors, now open] there are discovered the EMPEROR NAPOLÉON,the GRAND-DUKE CONSTANTINE, PRINCE HENRY OF PRUSSIA, the PRINCEROYAL OF BAVARIA, the GRAND DUKE OF BERG, and attendant officers.Enter the TSAR ALEXANDER.  NAPOLÉON welcomes him, and the twainmove apart from the rest.  BONAPARTE placing a chair for hisvisitor and flinging himself down on another.]

NAPOLÉONThe comforts I can offer are not great,Nor is the accommodation more than scantThat falls to me for hospitality;But, as it is, accept.

ALEXANDERIt serves well.And to unbrace the bandages of stateIs as clear air to incense-stifled souls.What of the Queen?

NAPOLÉONShe’s coming with the King.We have some quarter-hour to spare or moreBefore their Majesties are timed for us.

ALEXANDERGood.  I would speak of them.  That she should show hereAfter the late events, betokens much!Abasement in so proud a woman’s heart  [His voice grows tremulous.]Is not without a dash of painfulness.And I beseech you, sire, that you hold outSome soothing hope for her?

NAPOLÉONI have, already!—Now, sire, to those affairs we entered on:Strong friendship, grown secure, bids me repeatThat you have been much duped by your allies.[ALEXANDER shows mortification.]Prussia’s a shuffler, England a self-seeker,Nobility has shone in you alone.Your error grew of over-generous dreams,And misbeliefs by dullard ministers.By treating personally we speed affairsMore in an hour than they in blundering months.Between us two, henceforth, must stand no third.There’s peril in it, while England’s mean ambitionStill works to get us skewered by the ears;And in this view your chiefs-of-staff concur.

ALEXANDERThe judgment of my officers I share.

NAPOLÉONTo recapitulate.  Nothing can greaten youLike this alliance.  Providence has flungMy good friend Sultan Selim from his throne,Leaving me free in dealings with the Porte;And I discern the hour as one to endA rule that Time no longer lets cohere.If I abstain, its spoils will go to swellThe power of this same England, our annoy;That country which enchains the trade of townsWith such bold reach as to monopolize,Among the rest, the whole of Petersburg’s—Ay!—through her purse, friend, as the lender there!—Shutting that purse, she may incite to—what?Muscovy’s fall, its ruler’s murdering.Her fleet at any minute can encoopYours in the Baltic; in the Black Sea, too;And keep you snug as minnows in a glass!Hence we, fast-fellowed by our mutual foes,Seaward the British, Germany by land,And having compassed, for our common good,The Turkish Empire’s due partitioning,As comrades can conjunctly rule the worldTo its own gain and our eternal fame!

ALEXANDER [stirred and flushed]I see vast prospects opened!—yet, in truth,Ere you, sire, broached these themes, their outlines loomedNot seldom in my own imaginings;But with less clear a vision than endowsSo great a captain, statesman, philosoph,As centre in yourself; whom had I knownSooner by some few years, months, even weeks,I had been spared full many a fault of rule.—Now as to Austria.  Should we call her in?

NAPOLÉONTwo in a bed I have slept, but never three.

ALEXANDERHa-ha!  Delightful.  And, then nextly, Spain?

NAPOLÉONI lighted on some letters at Berlin,Wherein King Carlos offered to attack me.A Bourbon, minded thus, so near as Spain,Is dangerous stuff.  He must be seen to soon!...A draft, then, of our treaty being penned,We will peruse it later.  If King GeorgeWill not, upon the terms there offered him,Conclude a ready peace, he can be forced.Trumpet yourself as France’s firm ally,And Austria will fain to do the same:England, left nude to such joint harassment,Must shiver—fall.

ALEXANDER [with naive enthusiasm]It is a great alliance!

NAPOLÉONWould it were one in blood as well as brain—Of family hopes, and sweet domestic bliss!

ALEXANDERAh—is it to my sister you refer?

NAPOLÉONThe launching of a lineal progenyHas been much pressed upon me, much, of late,For reasons which I will not dwell on now.Staid counsellors, my brother Joseph, too,Urge that I loose the Empress by divorce,And re-wive promptly for the country’s good.Princesses even have been named for me!—However this, to-day, is premature,And ’twixt ourselves alone....The Queen of Prussia must ere long be here:Berthier escorts her.  And the King, too, comes.She’s one whom you admire?

ALEXANDER [reddening ingenuously]Yes.... FormerlyI had—did feel that some faint fascinationVaguely adorned her form.  And, to be plain,Certain reports have been calumnious,And wronged an honest woman.

NAPOLÉONAs I knew!But she is wearing thready: why, her yearsMust be full one-and-thirty, if she’s one.

ALEXANDER [quickly]No, sire.  She’s twenty-nine.  If traits teach moreIt means that cruel memory gnaws at herAs fair inciter to that fatal warWhich broke her to the dust!... I do confess[Since now we speak on’t] that this sacrificePrussia is doomed to, still disquiets me.Unhappy King!  When I recall the oathsSworn him upon great Frederick’s sepulchre,And—and my promises to his sad Queen,It pricks me that his realm and revenuesShould be stript down to the mere half they were!

NAPOLÉON [cooly]Believe me, ’tis but my regard for youWhich lets me leave him that!  Far easier ’twereTo leave him none at all.[He rises and goes to the window.]But here they are.No; it’s the Queen alone, with BerthierAs I directed.  Then the King will follow.

ALEXANDERLet me, sire, urge your courtesy to bestowSome gentle words on her?

NAPOLÉONAy, ay; I will.[Enter QUEEN LOUISA OF PRUSSIA on the arm of BERTHIER.  Sheappears in majestic garments and with a smile on her lips, sothat her still great beauty is impressive.  But her eyes beartraces of tears.  She accepts NAPOLÉON’S attentions with thestormily sad air of a wounded beauty.  Whilst she is beingreceived the KING arrives.  He is a plain, shy, honest-faced,awkward man, with a wrecked and solitary look.  His manner toNAPOLÉON is, nevertheless, dignified, and even stiff.The company move into the inner half of the room, where thetables are, and the folding-doors being shut, they seat themselvesat dinner, the QUEEN taking a place between NAPOLÉON and ALEXANDER.]

NAPOLÉONMadame, I love magnificent attire;But in the present instance can but noteThat each bright knot and jewel less adornsThe brighter wearer than the wearer it!

QUEEN [with a sigh]You praise one, sire, whom now the wanton worldHas learnt to cease from praising!  But such wordsFrom such a quarter are of worth no less.

NAPOLÉONOf worth as candour, madame; not as gauge.Your reach in rarity outsoars my scope.Yet, do you know, a troop of my hussars,That last October day, nigh captured you?

QUEENNay!  Never a single Frenchman did I see.

NAPOLÉONNot less it was that you exposed yourself,And should have been protected.  But at Weimar,Had you but sought me, ’twould have bettered you.

QUEENI had no zeal to meet you, sire, alas!

NAPOLÉON [after a silence]And how at Memel do you sport with time?

QUEENSport?  I!—I pore on musty chronicles,And muse on usurpations long forgot,And other historied dramas of high wrong!

NAPOLÉONWhy con not annals of your own rich age?They treasure acts well fit for pondering.

QUEENI am reminded too much of my ageBy having had to live in it.  May HeavenDefend me now, and my wan ghost anon,From conning it again!

NAPOLÉONAlas, alas!Too grievous, this, for one who is yet a queen!

QUEENNo; I have cause for vials more of grief.—Prussia was blind in blazoning her powerAgainst the Mage of Earth!...The embers of great Frederick’s deeds inflamed her:His glories swelled her to her ruining.Too well has she been punished!  [Emotion stops her.]

ALEXANDER [in a low voice, looking anxiously at her]Say not so.You speak as all were lost.  Things are not thus!Such desperation has unreason in it,And bleeds the hearts that crave to comfort you.

NAPOLÉON [to the King]I trust the treaty, further pondered, sire,Has consolations?

KING [curtly]I am a luckless man;And muster strength to bear my lucklessnessWithout vain hope of consolations now.One thing, at least, I trust I have shown you, sireThatIprovoked not this calamity!At Anspach first my feud with you began—Anspach, my Eden, violated and shamedBy blushless tramplings of your legions there!

NAPOLÉONIt’s rather late, methinks, to talk thus now.

KING [with more choler]Never too late for truth and plainspeaking!

NAPOLÉON [blandly]To your ally, the Tsar, I must refer you.He was it, and not I, who tempted youTo push for war, when Eylau must have shownYour every profit to have lain in peace.—He can indemn; yes, much or small; and may.

KING [with a head-shake]I would make up, would well make up, my mindTo half my kingdom’s loss, could in such limbBut Magdeburg not lie.  Dear Magdeburg,Place of my heart-hold; THAT I would retain!

NAPOLÉONOur words take not such pattern as is wontTo grace occasions of festivity.[He turns brusquely from the King.  The banquet proceeds with amore general conversation.  When finished a toast is proposed:“The Freedom of the Seas,” and drunk with enthusiasm.]

SPIRIT SINISTERAnother hit at England and her tubs!I hear harsh echoes from her chalky chines.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIESO heed not England now!  Still read the Queen.One grieves to see her spend her pretty spellsUpon the man who has so injured her.[They rise from table, and the folding-doors being opened they passinto the adjoining room.Here are now assembled MURAT, TALLEYRAND, KOURAKIN, KALKREUTH,BERTHIER, BESSIERES, CAULAINCOURT, LABANOFF, BENNIGSEN, and others.NAPOLÉON having spoken a few words here and there resumes hisconversation with QUEEN LOUISA, and parenthetically offers snuffto the COUNTESS VOSS, her lady-in-waiting.  TALLEYRAND, who hasobserved NAPOLÉON’S growing interest in the QUEEN, contrives toget near him.]

TALLEYRAND [in a whisper]Sire, is it possible that you can bendTo let one woman’s fairness filch from youAll the resplendent fortune that attendsThe grandest victory of your grand career?[The QUEEN’S quick eye observes and flashes at the whisper, andshe obtains a word with the minister.]

QUEEN [sarcastically]I should infer, dear Monsieur Talleyrand,Only two persons in the world regretMy having come to Tilsit.

TALLEYRANDMadame, two?Can any!—who may such sad rascals be?

QUEENYou, and myself, Prince.  [Gravely.]  Yes! myself and you.[TALLEYRAND’S face becomes impassive, and he does not reply.Soon the QUEEN prepares to leave, and NAPOLÉON rejoins her.]

NAPOLÉON [taking a rose from a vase]Dear Queen, do pray accept this little tokenAs souvenir of me before you go?[He offers her the rose, with his hand on his heart.  Shehesitates, but accepts it.]

QUEEN [impulsively, with waiting tears]Let Magdeburg come with it, sire!  O yes!

NAPOLÉON [with sudden frigidity]It is for you to take what I can give.And I give this—no more.15[She turns her head to hide her emotion, and withdraws.  NAPOLÉONsteps up to her, and offers his arm.  She takes it silently, andhe perceives the tears on her cheeks.  They cross towards the ante-room, away from the other guests.]

NAPOLÉON [softly]Still weeping, dearest lady!  Why is this?

QUEEN [seizing his hand and pressing it]Your speeches darn the tearings of your sword!—Between us two, as man and woman now,Is’t even possible you question why!O why did not the Greatest of the Age—Of future ages—of the ages past,This one time win a woman’s worship—yea,For all her little life!

NAPOLÉON [gravely]Know you, my FairThat I—ay, I—in this deserve your pity.—Some force within me, baffling mine intent,Harries me onward, whether I will or no.My star, my star is what’s to blame—not I.It is unswervable!

QUEENThen now, alas!My duty’s done as mother, wife, and queen.—I’ll say no more—but that my heart is broken![Exeunt NAPOLÉON, QUEEN, and LADY-IN-WAITING.]

SPIRIT OF THE YEARSHe spoke thus at the Bridge of Lodi.  Strange,He’s of the few in Europe who discernThe working of the Will.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIESIf that be so,Better for Europe lacked he such discerning![NAPOLÉON returns to the room and joins TALLEYRAND.]

NAPOLÉON [aside to his minister]My God, it was touch-and-go that time, Talleyrand!  She was withinan ace of getting over me.  As she stepped into the carriage shesaid in her pretty way, “O I have been cruelly deceived by you!”And when she sank down inside, not knowing I heard, she burst intosobs fit to move a statue.  The Devil take me if I hadn’t a goodmind to stop the horses, jump in, give her a good kissing, andagree to all she wanted.  Ha-ha, well; a miss is as good as a mile.Had she come sooner with those sweet, beseeching blue eyes of hers,who knows what might not have happened!  But she didn’t come sooner,and I have kept in my right mind.[The RUSSIAN EMPEROR, the KING OF PRUSSIA, and other guests advanceto bid adieu.  They depart severally.  When they are gone NAPOLÉONturns to TALLEYRAND.]Adhere, then, to the treaty as it stands:Change not therein a single article,But write it fair forthwith.[Exeunt NAPOLÉON, TALLEYRAND, and other ministers and officers inwaiting.[

SHADE OF THE EARTHSome surly voice afar I heard nowOf an enisled Britannic quality;Wots any of the cause?

SPIRIT IRONICPerchance I do!Britain is roused, in her slow, stolid style,By Bonaparte’s pronouncement at BerlinAgainst her cargoes, commerce, life itself;And now from out her water citadelBlows counterblasting “Orders.”  Rumours tell.

RUMOUR I“From havens of fierce France and her allies,With poor or precious freight of merchandizeWhoso adventures, England pounds as prize!”

RUMOUR IIThereat Napoléon names her, furiously,Curst Oligarch, Arch-pirate of the sea,Who shall lack room to live while liveth he!

CHORUS OF THE PITIES [aerial music]And peoples are enmeshed in new calamity![Curtain of Evening Shades.]

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