BERTHIER [incredulously]
Can they be thus deceived, sire?
NAPOLÉON
Can they? Yes!
With all my practice I can err in numbers
At least one-quarter; why not they one-third?
Anyhow, ’tis worth trying at a pinch....
[AUGEREAU is suddenly announced.]
Good! I’ve not seen him yet since he arrived.
[Enter AUGEREAU.
Here you are then at last, old Augereau!
You have been looked for long.—But you are no more
The Augereau of Castiglione days!
AUGEREAU
Nay, sire! I still should be the Augereau
Of glorious Castiglione, could you give
The boys of Italy back again to me!
NAPOLÉON
Well, let it drop.... Only I notice round me
An atmosphere of scopeless apathy
Wherein I do not share.
AUGEREAU
There are reasons, sire,
Good reasons for despondence! As I came
I learnt, past question, that Bavaria
Swerves on the very pivot of desertion.
This adds some threescore thousand to our foes.
NAPOLÉON [irritated]
That consummation long has threatened us!...
Would that you showed the steeled fidelity
You used to show! Except me, all are slack!
[To Murat] Why, even you yourself, my brother-in-law,
Have been inclining to abandon me!
MURAT [vehemently]
I, sire? It is not so. I stand and swear
The grievous imputation is untrue.
You should know better than believe these things,
And well remember I have enemies
Who ever wait to slander me to you!
NAPOLÉON [more calmly]
Ah yes, yes. That is so.—And yet—and yet
You have deigned to weigh the feasibility
Of treating me as Austria has done!...
But I forgive you. You are a worthy man;
You feel real friendship for me. You are brave.
Yet I was wrong to make a king of you.
If I had been content to draw the line
At vice-king, as with young Eugène, no more,
As he has laboured you’d have laboured, too!
But as full monarch, you have foraged rather
For your own pot than mine!
[MURAT and the marshal are silent, and look at each other with
troubled countenances. NAPOLÉON goes to the table at the back, and
bends over the charts with CAULAINCOURT, dictating desultory notes
to the secretaries.]
SPIRIT IRONIC
A seer might say
This savours of a sad Last-Supper talk
’Twixt his disciples and this Christ of war!
[Enter an attendant.]
ATTENDANT
The Saxon King and Queen and the Princess
Enter the city gates, your Majesty.
They seek the shelter of the civic walls
Against the risk of capture by Allies.