The night fog enwraps the isle and the dying English army.
ACT FIFTH
SCENE I
PARIS. A BALLROOM IN THE HOUSE OF CAMBACÉRÈS
[The many-candled saloon at the ARCH-CHANCELLOR’S is visible
through a draped opening, and a crowd of masked dancers in
fantastic costumes revolve, sway, and intermingle to the music
that proceeds from an alcove at the further end of the same
apartment. The front of the scene is a withdrawing-room of
smaller size, now vacant, save for the presence of one sombre
figure, that of NAPOLÉON, seated and apparently watching the
moving masquerade.]
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
Napoléon even now embraces not
From stress of state affairs, which hold him grave
Through revels that might win the King of Spleen
To toe a measure! I would speak with him.
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
Speak if thou wilt whose speech nor mars nor mends!
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES [into Napoléon’s ear]
Why thus and thus Napoléon? Can it be
That Wagram with its glories, shocks, and shames,
Still leaves athirst the palate of thy pride?
NAPOLÉON [answering as in soliloquy]
The trustless, timorous lease of human life
Warns me to hedge in my diplomacy.
The sooner, then, the safer! Ay, this eve,
This very night, will I take steps to rid
My morrows of the weird contingencies
That vision round and make one hollow-eyed....
The unexpected, lurid death of Lannes—
Rigid as iron, reaped down like a straw—
Tiptoed Assassination haunting round
In unthought thoroughfares, the near success
Of Staps the madman, argue to forbid
The riskful blood of my previsioned line
And potence for dynastic empery
To linger vialled in my veins alone.
Perhaps within this very house and hour,
Under an innocent mask of Love or Hope,
Some enemy queues my ways to coffin me....
When at the first clash of the late campaign,
A bold belief in Austria’s star prevailed,
There pulsed quick pants of expectation round
Among the cowering kings, that too well told
What would have fared had I been overthrown!
So; I must send down shoots to future time
Who’ll plant my standard and my story there;
And a way opens.—Better I had not
Bespoke a wife from Alexander’s house.
Not there now lies my look. But done is done!
[The dance ends and masks enter, BERTHIER among them. NAPOLÉON
beckons to him, and he comes forward.]
God send you find amid this motley crew
Frivolities enough, friend Berthier—eh?
My thoughts have worn oppressive shades despite such!
What scandals of me do they bandy here?
These close disguises render women bold—
Their shames being of the light, not of the thing—
And your sagacity has garnered much,
I make no doubt, of ill and good report,
That marked our absence from the capital?
BERTHIER
Methinks, your Majesty, the enormous tale
Of your campaign, like Aaron’s serpent-rod,
Has swallowed up the smaller of its kind.
Some speak, ’tis true, in counterpoise thereto,
Of English deeds by Talavera town,
Though blurred by their exploit at Walcheren,
And all its crazy, crass futilities.
NAPOLÉON
Yet was the exploit well featured in design,
Large in idea, and imaginative;
I had not deemed the blinkered English folk
So capable of view. Their fate contrived
To place an idiot at the helm of it,
Who marred its working, else it had been hard
If things had not gone seriously for us.
—But see, a lady saunters hitherward
Whose gait proclaims her Madame Metternich,
One that I fain would speak with.
[NAPOLÉON rises and crosses the room toward a lady-masker who has
just appeared in the opening. BERTHIER draws off, and the EMPEROR,
unceremoniously taking the lady’s arm, brings her forward to a
chair, and sits down beside her as dancing is resumed.]