SECOND PEDESTRIAN
Onwards again!
If Boney’s come, ’tis best to be away;
And if he’s not, why, we’ve a holiday!
[Exeunt Pedestrians. The Spirits of Rumour vanish, while the scene
seems to become involved in the smoke from the beacon, and slowly
disappears.[6]]
ACT THIRD
SCENE I
BOULOGNE. THE CHATEAU AT PONT-DE-BRIQUES
[A room in the Chateau, which is used as the Imperial quarters.
The EMPEROR NAPOLÉON, and M. GASPARD MONGE, the mathematician
and philosopher, are seated at breakfast.]
OFFICER
Monsieur the Admiral Decrès awaits
A moment’s audience with your Majesty,
Or now, or later.
NAPOLÉON
Bid him in at once—
At last Villeneuve has raised the Brest blockade!
[Enter DECRÈS.]
What of the squadron’s movements, good Decrès?
Brest opened, and all sailing Channelwards,
Like swans into a creek at feeding-time?
DECRÈS
Such news was what I’d hoped, your Majesty,
To send across this daybreak. But events
Have proved intractable, it seems, of late;
And hence I haste in person to report
The featless facts that just have dashed my—-
NAPOLÉON [darkening]
Well?
DECRÈS
Sire, at the very juncture when the fleets
Sailed out from Ferrol, fever raged aboard
“LL’Achille” and “l’Algeciras”: later on,
Mischief assailed our Spanish comrades’ ships;
Several ran foul of neighbours; whose new hurts,
Being added to their innate clumsiness,
Gave hap the upper hand; and in quick course
Demoralized the whole; until Villeneuve,
Judging that Calder now with Nelson rode,
And prescient of unparalleled disaster
If he pushed on in so disjoint a trim,
Bowed to the inevitable; and thus, perforce,
Leaving to other opportunity
Brest and the Channel scheme, with vast regret
Steered southward into Cadiz.
NAPOLÉON [having risen from the table]
What!—Is, then,
My scheme of years to be disdained and dashed
By this man’s like, a wretched moral coward,
Whom you must needs foist on me as one fit
For full command in pregnant enterprise!