FIRST DESERTER
You lie low with your picking off, or he may pick off you! Thank
God the babies are gone. Maybe we shan’t be noticed, if we’ve but
the courage to do nothing, and keep hid.
[NAPOLÉON dismounts, approaches the fire, and looks around.]
NAPOLÉON
Another of their dead horses here, I see.
OFFICER
Yes, sire. We have counted eighteen hundred odd
From Benavente hither, pistoled thus.
Some we’d to finish for them: headlong haste
Spared them no time for mercy to their brutes.
One-half their cavalry now tramps afoot.
NAPOLÉON
And what’s the tale of waggons we’ve picked up?
OFFICER
Spanish and all abandoned, some four hundred;
Of magazines and firelocks, full ten load;
And stragglers and their girls a numerous crew.
NAPOLÉON
Ay, devil—plenty those! Licentious ones
These English, as all canting peoples are.—
And prisoners?
OFFICER
Seven hundred English, sire;
Spaniards five thousand more.
NAPOLÉON
’Tis not amiss.
To keep the new year up they run away!
[He soliloquizes as he begins tearing open the dispatches.]
Nor Pitt nor Fox displayed such blundering
As glares in this campaign! It is, indeed,
Enlarging Folly to Foolhardiness
To combat France by land! But how expect
Aught that can claim the name of government
From Canning, Castlereagh, and Perceval,
Caballers all—poor sorry politicians—
To whom has fallen the luck of reaping in
The harvestings of Pitt’s bold husbandry.
[He unfolds a dispatch, and looks for something to sit on. A cloak
is thrown over a log, and he settles to reading by the firelight.
The others stand round. The light, crossed by the snow-flakes,
flickers on his unhealthy face and stoutening figure. He sinks
into the rigidity of profound thought, till his features lour.]
So this is their reply! They have done with me!
Britain declines negotiating further—
Flouts France and Russia indiscriminately.
“Since one dethrones and keeps as prisoners
The most legitimate kings”—that means myself—
“The other suffers their unworthy treatment
For sordid interests”—that’s for Alexander!...
And what is Georgy made to say besides?—
“Pacific overtures to us are wiles
Woven to unnerve the generous nations round
Lately escaped the galling yoke of France,
Or waiting so to do. Such, then, being seen,
These tentatives must be regarded now
As finally forgone; and crimson war
Be faced to its fell worst, unflinchingly.”
—The devil take their lecture! What am I,
That England should return such insolence?
[He jumps up, furious, and walks to and fro beside the fire.
By and by cooling he sits down again.]
Now as to hostile signs in Austria....
[He breaks another seal and reads.]
Ah,—swords to cross with her some day in spring!
Thinking me cornered over here in Spain
She speaks without disguise, the covert pact
’Twixt her and England owning now quite frankly,
Careless how works its knowledge upon me.
She, England, Germany: well—I can front them!
That there is no sufficient force of French
Between the Elbe and Rhine to prostrate her,
Let new and terrible experience
Soon disillude her of! Yea; she may arm:
The opportunity she late let slip
Will not subserve her now!
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
Has he no heart-hints that this Austrian court,
Whereon his mood takes mould so masterful,
Is rearing naively in its nursery-room
A future wife for him?
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
Thou dost but guess it,
And how should his heart know?