FIRST ATTACHE
We shall have to go unserved likewise, I fancy. The scramble at the
buffets is terrible.
DIPLOMATIST
And the road from here to Marsh Gate is impassable. Some ladies have
been sitting in their coaches for hours outside the hedge there. We
shall not get home till noon to-morrow.
A VOICE [from the back]
Take care of your watches! Pickpockets!
FIRST ATTACHE
Good. That relieves the monotony a little.
[Excitement in the throng. When it has subsided the band strikes
up a country dance, and stewards with white ribbons and laurel
leaves are seen bustling about.]
SECOND ATTACHE
Let us go and look at the dancing. It is “Voulez-vous danser”—no,
it is not,—it is “Enrico”—two ladies between two gentlemen.
[They go from the alcove.]
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
From this phantasmagoria let us roam
To the chief wheel and capstan of the show,
Distant afar. I pray you closely read
What I reveal—wherein each feature bulks
In measure with its value humanly.
[The beholder finds himself, as it were, caught up on high, and
while the Vauxhall scene still dimly twinkles below, he gazes
southward towards Central Europe—the contorted and attenuated
ecorche of the Continent appearing as in an earlier scene, but
now obscure under the summer stars.]
Three cities loom out large: Vienna there,
Dresden, which holds Napoléon, over here,
And Leipzig, whither we shall shortly wing,
Out yonderwards. ’Twixt Dresden and Vienna
What thing do you discern?
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
Something broad-faced,
Flat-folded, parchment-pale, and in its shape
Rectangular; but moving like a cloud
The Dresden way.
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
Yet gaze more closely on it.
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
The object takes a letter’s lineaments
Though swollen to mainsail measure,—magically,
I gather from your words; and on its face
Are three vast seals, red—signifying blood
Must I suppose? It moves on Dresden town,
And dwarfs the city as it passes by.—
You say Napoléon’s there?
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
The document,
Sized to its big importance, as I told,
Bears in it formal declaration, signed,
Of war by Francis with his late-linked son,
The Emperor of France. Now let us go
To Leipzig city, and await the blow.
[A chaotic gloom ensues, accompanied by a rushing like that of a
mighty wind.]