SCENE I
THE UPPER RHINE
[The view is from a vague altitude over the beautiful country
traversed by the Upper Rhine, which stretches through it in
birds-eye perspective. At this date in Europe’s history the
stream forms the frontier between France and Germany.
It is the morning of New Year’s Day, and the shine of the tardy
sun reaches the fronts of the beetling castles, but scarcely
descends far enough to touch the wavelets of the river winding
leftwards across the many-leagued picture from Schaffhausen to
Coblenz.]
DUMB SHOW
At first nothing—not even the river itself—seems to move in the
panorama. But anon certain strange dark patches in the landscape,
flexuous and riband-shaped, are discerned to be moving slowly.
Only one movable object on earth is large enough to be conspicuous
herefrom, and that is an army. The moving shapes are armies.
The nearest, almost beneath us, is defiling across the river by a
bridge of boats, near the junction of the Rhine and the Neckar,
where the oval town of Mannheim, standing in the fork between the
two rivers, has from here the look of a human head in a cleft
stick. Martial music from many bands strikes up as the crossing
is effected, and the undulating columns twinkle as if they were
scaly serpents.
SPIRIT OF RUMOUR
It is the Russian host, invading France!
Many miles to the left, down-stream, near the little town of Caube,
another army is seen to be simultaneously crossing the pale current,
its arms and accoutrements twinkling in like manner.
SPIRIT OF RUMOUR
Thither the Prussian levies, too, advance!
Turning now to the right, far away by Basel [beyond which the
Swiss mountains close the scene], a still larger train of war-
geared humanity, two hundred thousand strong, is discernible.
It has already crossed the water, which is much narrower here,
and has advanced several miles westward, where its ductile mass
of greyness and glitter is beheld parting into six columns, that
march on in flexuous courses of varying direction.
SPIRIT OF RUMOUR
There glides carked Austria’s invading force!—
Panting, too, Paris-wards with foot and horse,
Of one intention with the other twain,
And Wellington, from the south, in upper Spain.
All these dark and grey columns, converging westward by sure
degrees, advance without opposition. They glide on as if by
gravitation, in fluid figures, dictated by the conformation of
the country, like water from a burst reservoir; mostly snake-
shaped, but occasionally with batrachian and saurian outlines.
In spite of the immensity of this human mechanism on its surface,
the winter landscape wears an impassive look, as if nothing were
happening.
Evening closes in, and the Dumb Show is obscured.