NAPOLÉON [after a silence]
And how at Memel do you sport with time?
QUEEN
Sport? I!—I pore on musty chronicles,
And muse on usurpations long forgot,
And other historied dramas of high wrong!
NAPOLÉON
Why con not annals of your own rich age?
They treasure acts well fit for pondering.
QUEEN
I am reminded too much of my age
By having had to live in it. May Heaven
Defend me now, and my wan ghost anon,
From conning it again!
NAPOLÉON
Alas, alas!
Too grievous, this, for one who is yet a queen!
QUEEN
No; I have cause for vials more of grief.—
Prussia was blind in blazoning her power
Against 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 lucklessness
Without vain hope of consolations now.
One thing, at least, I trust I have shown you, sire
That I provoked not this calamity!
At Anspach first my feud with you began—
Anspach, my Eden, violated and shamed
By blushless tramplings of your legions there!
NAPOLÉON
It’s rather late, methinks, to talk thus now.