PRINCE REGENT
Pity she didn’t have a child by him, by God.
KING OF PRUSSIA
I don’t think the other one’s child is going to trouble us much.
But I wish Bonaparte himself had been sent farther away.
PRINCE REGENT
Some of our Government wanted to pack him off to St. Helena—an
island somewhere in the Atlantic, or Pacific, or Great South Sea.
But they were over-ruled. ’Twould have been a surer game.
EMPEROR OF RUSSIA
One hears strange stories of his saying and doings. Some of my
people were telling me to-day that he says it is to Austria that
he really owes his fall, and that he ought to have destroyed her
when he had her in his power.
PRINCE REGENT
Dammy, sire, don’t ye think he owes his fall to his ambition to
humble England by rupture of the Peace of Amiens, and trying to
invade us, and wasting his strength against us in the Peninsula?
EMPEROR OF RUSSIA
I incline to think, with the greatest deference, that it was Moscow
that broke him.
KING OF PRUSSIA
The rejection of my conditions in the terms of peace at Prague, sires,
was the turning-point towards his downfall.
[Enter a box on the opposite side of the house the PRINCESS OF
WALES, attended by LADY CHARLOTTE CAMPBELL, SIR W. GELL, and
others. Louder applause now rings through the theatre, drowning
the sweet voice of the GRASSINI in “Aristodemo.”]
LADY CHARLOTTE CAMPBELL
It is meant for your Royal Highness!
PRINCESS OF WALES
I don’t think so, my dear. Punch’s wife is nobody when Punch himself
is present.
LADY CHARLOTTE CAMPBELL
I feel convinced that it is by their looking this way.