SECOND CITIZEN
They cry for water! Let us go down,
And do what mercy may.
[Exeunt citizens from the tower.]
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
A fire is lit
Near to the Thonberg wind-wheel. Can it be
Napoléon tarries yet? Let us go see.
[The distant firelight becomes clearer and closer.]
SCENE IV
THE SAME. AT THE THONBERG WINDMILL
[By the newly lighted fire NAPOLÉON is seen walking up and down,
much agitated and worn. With him are MURAT, BERTHIER, AUGEREAU,
VICTOR, and other marshals of corps that have been engaged in this
part of the field—all perspiring, muddy, and fatigued.]
NAPOLÉON
Baseness so gross I had not guessed of them!—
The thirty thousand false Bavarians
I looked on losing not unplacidly;
But these troth-swearing sober Saxonry
I reckoned staunch by virtue of their king!
Thirty-five thousand and gone! It magnifies
A failure into a catastrophe....
Murat, we must retreat precipitately,
And not as hope had dreamed! Begin it then
This very hour.—Berthier, write out the orders.—
Let me sit down.
[A chair is brought out from the mill. NAPOLÉON sinks into it, and
BERTHIER, stooping over the fire, begins writing to the Emperor’s
dictation, the marshals looking with gloomy faces at the flaming
logs.
NAPOLÉON has hardly dictated a line when he stops short. BERTHIER
turns round and finds that he has dropt asleep.]
MURAT [sullenly]
Far better not disturb him;
He’ll soon enough awake!
[They wait, muttering to one another in tones expressing weary
indifference to issues. NAPOLÉON sleeps heavily for a quarter of
and hour, during which the moon rises over the field. At the end
he starts up stares around him with astonishment.]
NAPOLÉON
Am I awake?
Or is this all a dream?—Ah, no. Too real!...
And yet I have seen ere now a time like this.
[The dictation is resumed. While it is in progress there can be
heard between the words of NAPOLÉON the persistent cries from the
plain, rising and falling like those of a vast rookery far away,
intermingled with the trampling of hoofs and the rumble of wheels.
The bivouac fires of the engirdling enemy glow all around except
for a small segment to the west—the track of retreat, still kept
open by BERTRAND, and already taken by the baggage-waggons.
The orders for its adoption by the entire army being completed,
NAPOLÉON bids adieu to his marshals, and rides with BERTHIER and
CAULAINCOURT into Leipzig. Exeunt also the others.]
SEMICHORUS I OF THE PITIES
Now, as in the dream of one sick to death,
There comes a narrowing room
That pens him, body and limbs and breath,
To wait a hideous doom,
SEMICHORUS II
So to Napoléon in the hush
That holds the town and towers
Through this dire night, a creeping crush
Seems inborne with the hours.
[The scene closes under a rimy mist, which makes a lurid cloud of
the firelights.]