3.
‘Here’s Parma, Placentia; there’s Naples and Rome.’
Talley smil’d ‘They are nothing but bone, Sir!’
‘For the present pass Prussia;
What think you of Russia?’
‘’Twere as good that we let her alone, Sir!’
4.
‘My ambition unsated, my fury unquenched,
Let Europe now shake to her bases:
For my banner unfurl’d,
I defy all the world,
And spit in th’ ambassadors’ faces.’
5.
Seeing raw-head and bloody bones wondrous irate,
Talley turn’d o’er the leaf with his finger;
‘Here’s Hanover—if—’
‘If what?’ in a tiff
Cries Boney, ‘Tell Mortier to bring her.
6.
‘Let her bleed till her life strings are ready to burst,
To drain her let Massena shew you;
The job being done,
And all her fat run,
We’ll give up her trunk to—you know who.
7.
‘This will do for a breakfast—read on.’ Talley read,
Each page they conn’d over and over,
‘I can find nothing here;
We must stop, Sir, I fear.’
Boney scowl’d, and then pointed to Dover.