NAPOLÉON
Ha, ha! That’s like you. Well, each day by day
I get sour news. Each hour since we returned
From this queer Spanish business at Bayonne,
I have had nothing else; and hence by brooding.
JOSÉPHINE
But all went well throughout our touring-time?
NAPOLÉON
Not so—behind the scenes. Our arms a Baylen
Have been smirched badly. Twenty thousand shamed
All through Dupont’s ill-luck! The selfsame day
My brother Joseph’s progress to Madrid
Was glorious as a sodden rocket’s fizz!
Since when his letters creak with querulousness.
“Napoléon el chico” ’tis they call him—
“Napoléon the Little,” so he says.
Then notice Austria. Much looks louring there,
And her sly new regard for England grows.
The English, next, have shipped an army down
To Mondego, under one Wellesley,
A man from India, and his march is south
To Lisbon, by Vimiero. On he’ll go
And do the devil’s mischief ere he is met
By unaware Junot, and chevyed back
To English fogs and fumes!
JOSÉPHINE
My dearest one,
You have mused on worse reports with better grace
Full many and many a time. Ah—there is more!...
I know; I know!
NAPOLÉON [kicking away a stool]
There is, of course; that worm
Time ever keeps in hand for gnawing me!—
The question of my dynasty—which bites
Closer and closer as the years wheel on.
JOSÉPHINE
Of course it’s that! For nothing else could hang
My lord on tenterhooks through nights and days;—
Or rather, not the question, but the tongues
That keep the question stirring. Nought recked you
Of throne-succession or dynastic lines
When gloriously engaged in Italy!
I was your fairy then: they labelled me
Your Lady of Victories; and much I joyed,
Till dangerous ones drew near and daily sowed
These choking tares within your fecund brain,—
Making me tremble if a panel crack,
Or mouse but cheep, or silent leaf sail down,
And murdering my melodious hours with dreads
That my late happiness, and my late hope,
Will oversoon be knelled!
NAPOLÉON [genially nearing her]
But years have passed since first we talked of it,
And now, with loss of dear Hortense’s son
Who won me as my own, it looms forth more.
And selfish ’tis in my good Joséphine
To blind her vision to the weal of France,
And this great Empire’s solidarity.
The grandeur of your sacrifice would gild
Your life’s whole shape.
JOSÉPHINE
Were I as coarse a wife
As I am limned in English caricature—
[Those cruel effigies they draw of me!]—
You could not speak more aridly.
NAPOLÉON
Nay, nay!
You know, my comrade, how I love you still
Were there a long-notorious dislike
Betwixt us, reason might be in your dreads
But all earth knows our conjugality.
There’s not a bourgeois couple in the land
Who, should dire duty rule their severance,
Could part with scanter scandal than could we.
JOSÉPHINE [pouting]
Nevertheless there’s one.