SCENE VII
MALMAISON. THE EMPRESS JOSÉPHINE’S BEDCHAMBER
[The walls are in white panels, with gilt mouldings, and the
furniture is upholstered in white silk with needle-worked flowers.
The long windows and the bed are similarly draped, and the toilet
service is of gold. Through the panes appears a broad flat lawn
adorned with vases and figures on pedestals, and entirely
surrounded by trees—just now in their first fresh green under
the morning rays of Whitsunday. The notes of an organ are audible
from a chapel below, where the Pentecostal Mass is proceeding.
JOSÉPHINE lies in the bed in an advanced stage of illness, the
ABBÉ BERTRAND standing beside her. Two ladies-in-waiting are
seated near. By the door into the ante-room, which is ajar,
HOREAU the physician-in-ordinary and BOURDOIS the consulting
physician are engaged in a low conversation.]
HOREAU
Lamoureux says that leeches would have saved her
Had they been used in time, before I came.
In that case, then, why did he wait for me?
BOURDOIS
Such whys are now too late! She is past all hope.
I doubt if aught had helped her. Not disease,
But heart-break and repinings are the blasts
That wither her long bloom. Soon we must tell
The Queen Hortense the worst, and the Viceroy.
HOREAU
Her death was made the easier task for grief
[As I regarded more than probable]
By her rash rising from a sore-sick bed
And donning thin and dainty May attire
To hail King Frederick-William and the Tsar
As banquet-guests, in the old regnant style.
A woman’s innocent vanity!—but how dire.
She argued that amenities of State
Compelled the effort, since they had honoured her
By offering to come. I stood against it,
Pleaded and reasoned, but to no account.
Poor woman, what she did or did not do
Was of small moment to the State by then!
The Emperor Alexander has been kind
Throughout his stay in Paris. He came down
But yester-eve, of purpose to inquire.
BOURDOIS
Wellington is in Paris, too, I learn,
After his wasted battle at Toulouse.
HOREAU
Has his Peninsular army come with him?
BOURDOIS
I hear they have shipped it to America,
Where England has another war on hand.
We have armies quite sufficient here already—
Plenty of cooks for Paris broth just now!
—Come, call we Queen Hortense and Prince Eugène.
[Exeunt physicians. The ABBÉ BERTRAND also goes out. JOSÉPHINE
murmurs faintly.]
FIRST LADY [going to the bedside]
I think I heard you speak, your Majesty?
JOSÉPHINE
I asked what hour it was—-if dawn or eve?