SPIRIT SINISTER
This is sound artistry of the Immanent Will: it relieves the monotony
of so much good-humour.
NAPOLÉON [to the Chapel-master]
Where are the Cardinals? And why not here? [He speaks so loud that
he is heard throughout the Gallery.]
ABBÉ DE PRADT [trembling]
Many are present here, your Majesty;
But some are feebled by infirmities
Too common to their age, and cannot come.
NAPOLÉON
Tell me no nonsense! Half absent themselves
Because they WILL not come. The factious fools!
Well, be it so. But they shall flinch for it!
[MARIE LOUISE looks frightened. The procession moves on.]
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
I seem to see the thin and headless ghost
Of the yet earlier Austrian, here, too, queen,
Walking beside the bride, with frail attempts
To pluck her by the arm!
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
Nay, think not so.
No trump unseals earth’s sepulchre’s to-day:
We are the only phantoms now abroad
On this mud-moulded ball! Through sixteen years
She has decayed in a back-garden yonder,
Dust all the showance time retains of her,
Senseless of hustlings in her former house,
Lost to all count of crowns and bridalry—
Even of her Austrian blood. No: what thou seest
Springs of the quavering fancy, stirred to dreams
By yon tart phantom’s phrase.
MARIE LOUISE [sadly to Napoléon]
I know not why,
I love not this day’s doings half so well
As our quaint meeting-time at Compiegne.
A clammy air creeps round me, as from vaults
Peopled with looming spectres, chilling me
And angering you withal!
NAPOLÉON
O, it is nought
To trouble you: merely, my cherished one,
Those devils of Italian Cardinals!—
Now I’ll be bright as ever—you must, too.
MARIE LOUISE
I’ll try.
[Reaching the entrance to the Salon-Carre amid strains of music
the EMPEROR and EMPRESS are received and incensed by the CARDINAL
GRAND ALMONERS. They take their seats under the canopy, and the
train of notabilities seat themselves further back, the persons-
in-waiting stopping behind the Imperial chairs.
The ceremony of the religious marriage now begins. The choir
intones a hymn, the EMPEROR and EMPRESS go to the altar, remove
their gloves, and make their vows.]
SPIRIT IRONIC
The English Church should return thanks for this wedding, seeing
how it will purge of coarseness the picture-sheets of that artistic
nation, which will hardly be able to caricature the new wife as it
did poor plebeian Joséphine. Such starched and ironed monarchists
cannot sneer at a woman of such a divinely dry and crusted line like
the Hapsburgs!
[Mass is next celebrated, after which the TE DEUM is chanted in
harmonies that whirl round the walls of the Salon-Carre and quiver
down the long Gallery. The procession then re-forms and returns,
amid the flutterings and applause of the dense assembly. But
Napoléon’s face has not lost the sombre expression which settled
on it. The pair and their train pass out by the west door, and
the congregation disperses in the other direction, the cloud-
curtain closing over the scene as they disappear.