SCENE VII
TILSIT AND THE RIVER NIEMEN
[The scene is viewed from the windows of BONAPARTE’S temporary
quarters. Some sub-officers of his suite are looking out upon
it.
It is the day after midsummer, about one o’clock. A multitude
of soldiery and spectators lines each bank of the broad river
which, stealing slowly north-west, bears almost exactly in its
midst a moored raft of bonded timber. On this as a floor stands
a gorgeous pavilion of draped woodwork, having at each side,
facing the respective banks of the stream, a round-headed doorway
richly festooned. The cumbersome erection acquires from the
current a rhythmical movement, as if it were breathing, and the
breeze now and then produces a shiver on the face of the stream.]
DUMB SHOW
On the south-west or Prussian side rides the EMPEROR NAPOLÉON
in uniform, attended by the GRAND DUKE OF BERG, the PRINCE OF
NEUFCHÂTEL, MARSHAL BESSIERES, DUROC Marshal of the Palace, and
CAULAINCOURT Master of the Horse. The EMPEROR looks well, but is
growing fat. They embark on an ornamental barge in front of them,
which immediately puts off. It is now apparent to the watchers
that a precisely similar enactment has simultaneously taken place
on the opposite or Russian bank, the chief figure being the
EMPEROR ALEXANDER—a graceful, flexible man of thirty, with a
courteous manner and good-natured face. He has come out from
an inn on that side accompanied by the GRAND DUKE CONSTANTINE,
GENERAL BENNIGSEN, GENERAL OUWAROFF, PRINCE LABANOFF, and ADJUTANT-
GENERAL COUNT LIEVEN.
The two barges draw towards the raft, reaching the opposite sides
of it about the same time, amidst discharges of cannon. Each
Emperor enters the door that faces him, and meeting in the centre
of the pavilion they formally embrace each other. They retire
together to the screened interior, the suite of each remaining in
the outer half of the pavilion.
More than an hour passes while they are thus invisible. The French
officers who have observed the scene from the lodging of NAPOLÉON
walk about idly, and ever and anon go curiously to the windows,
again to watch the raft.
CHORUS OF THE YEARS [aerial music]
The prelude to this smooth scene—mark well!—were the shocks
whereof the times gave token
Vaguely to us ere last year’s snows shut over Lithuanian pine
and pool,
Which we told at the fall of the faded leaf, when the pride of
Prussia was bruised and broken,
And the Man of Adventure sat in the seat of the Man of Method
and rigid Rule.
SEMICHORUS I OF THE PITIES
Snows incarnadined were thine, O Eylau, field of the wide white
spaces,
And frozen lakes, and frozen limbs, and blood iced hard as it left
the veins:
Steel-cased squadrons swathed in cloud-drift, plunging to doom
through pathless places,
And forty thousand dead and near dead, strewing the early-lighted
plains.
Friedland to these adds its tale of victims, its midnight marches
and hot collisions,
Its plunge, at his word, on the enemy hooped by the bended river
and famed Mill stream,
As he shatters the moves of the loose-knit nations to curb his
exploitful soul’s ambitions,
And their great Confederacy dissolves like the diorama of a dream.
DUMB SHOW [continues]
NAPOLÉON and ALEXANDER emerge from their seclusion, and each is
beheld talking to the suite of his companion apparently in
flattering compliment. An effusive parting, which signifies
itself to be but temporary, is followed by their return to the
river shores amid the cheers of the spectators.
NAPOLÉON and his marshals arrive at the door of his quarters and
enter, and pass out of sight to other rooms than that of the
foreground in which the observers are loitering. Dumb show ends.
[A murmured conversation grows audible, carried on by two persons
in the crowd beneath the open windows. Their dress being the
native one, and their tongue unfamiliar, they seem to the officers
to be merely inhabitants gossiping; and their voices continue
unheeded.]
FIRST ENGLISH SPY[14] [below]
Did you get much for me to send on?
SECOND ENGLISH SPY
Much; and startling, too. “Why are we at war?” says Napoléon when
they met.—“Ah—why!” said t’other.—“Well,” said Boney, “I am
fighting you only as an ally of the English, and you are simply
serving them, and not yourself, in fighting me.”—“In that case,”
says Alexander, “we shall soon be friends, for I owe her as great
a grudge as you.”
FIRST SPY
Dammy, go that length, did they!
SECOND SPY
Then they plunged into the old story about English selfishness,
and greed, and duplicity. But the climax related to Spain, and
it amounted to this: they agreed that the Bourbons of the Spanish
throne should be made to abdicate, and Bonaparte’s relations set
up as sovereigns instead of them.