EMPRESS
He should never have been let come nearer than Ratisbon! The victory
at Echmuhl was fatal for us. O Echmuhl, Echmuhl! I believe he will
overtake us before we get to Buda.
FIRST LADY-IN-WAITING
If so, your Majesty, shall we be claimed as prisoners and marched
to Paris?
EMPRESS
Undoubtedly. But I shouldn’t much care. It would not be worse than
this.... I feel sodden all through me, and frowzy, and broken!
[She closes her eyes as if to doze.]
MARIA LOUISA
It is dreadful to see her suffer so! [Shutting the window.] If
the roads were not so bad I should not mind. I almost wish we had
stayed; though when he arrives the cannonade will be terrible.
FIRST LADY-IN-WAITING
I wonder if he will get into Vienna. Will his men knock down all
the houses, madam?
MARIA LOUISA
If he do get in, I am sure his triumph will not be for long. My
uncle the Archduke Charles is at his heels! I have been told many
important prophecies about Bonaparte’s end, which is fast nearing,
it is asserted. It is he, they say, who is referred to in the
Apocalypse. He is doomed to die this year at Cologne, in an inn
called “The Red Crab.” I don’t attach too much importance to all
these predictions, but O, how glad I should be to see them come true!
SECOND LADY-IN-WAITING
So should we all, madam. What would become of his divorce-scheme
then?
MARIA LOUISA
Perhaps there is nothing in that report. One can hardly believe
such gossip.
SECOND LADY-IN-WAITING
But they say, your Imperial Highness, that he certainly has decided
to sacrifice the Empress Joséphine, and that at the meeting last
October with the Emperor Alexander at Erfurt, it was even settled
that he should marry as his second wife the Grand-Duchess Anne.
MARIA LOUISA
I am sure that the Empress her mother will never allow one of the
house of Romanoff to marry with a bourgeois Corsican. I wouldn’t
if I were she!