SECOND LADY
An adjutant of Marshal Moellendorf’s
If I define him rightly. Read—O read!—
Though reading draw them from their socket-holes
Use your eyes now!
THIRD LADY [glass up]
As soon as ’tis affixed....
Ah—this means much! The people’s air and gait
Too well betray disaster. [Reading.] “Berliners,
The King has lost the battle! Bear it well.
The foremost duty of a citizen
Is to maintain a brave tranquillity.
This is what I, the Governor, demand
Of men and women now.... The King lives still.”
[They turn from the window and sit in a silence broken only by
monosyllabic words, hearing abstractedly the dismay without
that has followed the previous excitement and hope.
The stagnation is ended by a cheering outside, of subdued
emotional quality, mixed with sounds of grief. They again
look forth. QUEEN LOUISA is leaving the city with a very
small escort, and the populace seem overcome. They strain
their eyes after her as she disappears. Enter fourth lady.]
FIRST LADY
How does she bear it? Whither does she go?
FOURTH LADY
She goes to join the King at Custrin, there
To abide events—as we. Her heroism
So schools her sense of her calamities
As out of grief to carve new queenliness,
And turn a mobile mien to statuesque,
Save for a sliding tear.
[The ladies leave the window severally.]
SPIRIT IRONIC
So the Will plays at flux and reflux still.
This monarchy, one-half whose pedestal
Is built of Polish bones, has bones home-made!
Let the fair woman bear it. Poland did.
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
Meanwhile the mighty Emperor nears apace,
And soon will glitter at the city gates
With palpitating drums, and breathing brass,
And rampant joyful-jingling retinue.
[An evening mist cloaks the scene.]
SCENE VI
THE SAME
[It is a brilliant morning, with a fresh breeze, and not a cloud.
The open Platz and the adjoining streets are filled with dense
crowds of citizens, in whose upturned faces curiosity has
mastered consternation and grief.
Martial music is heard, at first faint, then louder, followed
by a trampling of innumerable horses and a clanking of arms and
accoutrements. Through a street on the right hand of the view
from the windows come troops of French dragoons heralding the
arrival of BONAPARTE.
Re-enter the room hurriedly and cross to the windows several
ladies as before, some in tears.]
FIRST LADY
The kingdom late of Prussia, can it be
That thus it disappears?—a patriot-cry,
A battle, bravery, ruin; and no more?
SECOND LADY
Thank God the Queen’s gone!
THIRD LADY
To what sanctuary?
From earthquake shocks there is no sheltering cell!
—Is this what men call conquest? Must it close
As historied conquests do, or be annulled
By modern reason and the urbaner sense?—
Such issue none would venture to predict,
Yet folly ’twere to nourish foreshaped fears
And suffer in conjecture and in deed.—
If verily our country be dislimbed,
Then at the mercy of his domination
The face of earth will lie, and vassal kings
Stand waiting on himself the Overking,
Who ruling rules all; till desperateness
Sting and excite a bonded last resistance,
And work its own release.