LONDON.  FOX’S LODGINGS, ARLINGTON STREET

    [FOX, the Foreign Secretary in the new Ministry of All-the-Talents,
    sits at a table writing.  He is a stout, swarthy man, with shaggy
    eyebrows, and his breathing is somewhat obstructed.  His clothes
    look as though they had been slept in.  TROTTER, his private
    secretary, is writing at another table near.  A servant enters.]

  SERVANT

  Another stranger presses to see you, sir.

  FOX [without raising his eyes]

  Oh, another.  What’s he like?

  SERVANT

  A foreigner, sir; though not so out-at-elbows as might be thought
  from the denomination.  He says he’s from Gravesend, having lately
  left Paris, and that you sent him a passport.  He comes with a
  police-officer.

  FOX

  Ah, to be sure.  I remember.  Bring him in, and tell the officer
  to wait outside.  [Servant goes out.]  Trotter, will you leave us
  for a few minutes?  But be within hail.

    [The secretary retires, and the servant shows in a man who calls
    himself GUILLET DE GEVRILLIÈRE—a tall, thin figure of thirty,
    with restless eyes.  The door being shut behind him, he is left
    alone with the minister.  FOX points to a seat, leans back, and
    surveys his visitor.]

  GEVRILLIÈRE

  Thanks to you, sir, for this high privilege
  Of hailing England, and of entering here.
  Without a fore-extended confidence
  Like this of yours, my plans would not have sped.  [A Pause.]
  Europe, alas! sir, has her waiting foot
  Upon the sill of further slaughter-scenes!

  FOX

  I fear it is so!—In your lines you wrote,
  I think, that you are a true Frenchman born?

  GEVRILLIÈRE

  I did, sir.

  FOX

       How contrived you, then, to cross?

  GEVRILLIÈRE

  It was from Embden that I shipped for Gravesend,
  In a small sailer called the “Toby,” sir,
  Masked under Prussian colours.  Embden I reached
  On foot, on horseback, and by sundry shifts,
  From Paris over Holland, secretly.

  FOX

  And you are stored with tidings of much pith,
  Whose tenour would be priceless to the state?

  GEVRILLIÈRE

  I am.  It is, in brief, no more nor less
  Than means to mitigate and even end
  These welfare-wasting wars; ay, usher in
  A painless spell of peace.

  FOX

            Prithee speak on.
  No statesman can desire it more than I.

  GEVRILLIÈRE [looking to see that the door is shut]

  No nation, sir, can live its natural life,
  Or think its thoughts in these days unassailed,
  No crown-capt head enjoy tranquillity.
  The fount of such high spring-tide of disorder,
  Fevered disquietude, and forceful death,
  Is One,—a single man.  He—need I name?—
  The ruler is of France.

  FOX

            Well, in the past
  I fear that it has liked so.  But we see
  Good reason still to hope that broadening views,
  Politer wisdom now is helping him
  To saner guidance of his arrogant car.

  GEVRILLIÈRE

  The generous hope will never be fulfilled!
  Ceasing to bluff, then ceases he to be.
  None sees that written largelier than himself.

  FOX

  Then what may be the valued revelation
  That you can unlock in such circumstance?
  Sir, I incline to spell you as a spy,
  And not the honest help for honest men
  You gave you out to be!

  GEVRILLIÈRE

            I beg, sir,
  To spare me that suspicion.  Never a thought
  Could be more groundless.  Solemnly I vow
  That notwithstanding what his signals show
  The Emperor of France is as I say.—
  Yet bring I good assurance, and declare
  A medicine for all bruised Europe’s sores!

  FOX [impatiently]

  Well, parley to the point, for I confess
  No new negotiation do I note
  That you can open up to work such cure.

  GEVRILLIÈRE

  The sovereign remedy for an ill effect
  Is the extinction of its evil cause.
  Safely and surely how to compass this
  I have the weighty honour to disclose,
  Certain immunities being guaranteed
  By those your power can influence, and yourself.

  FOX [astonished]

  Assassination?

  GEVRILLIÈRE

            I care  not for names!
  A deed’s true name is as its purpose is.
  The lexicon of Liberty and Peace
  Defines not this deed as assassination;
  Though maybe it is writ so in the tongue
  Of courts and universal tyranny.

  FOX

  Why brought you this proposal here to me?

  GEVRILLIÈRE

  My knowledge of your love of things humane,
  Things free, things fair, of truth, of tolerance,
  Right, justice, national felicity,
  Prompted belief and hope in such a man!—
  The matter is by now well forwarded,
  A house at Plassy hired as pivot-point
  From which the sanct intention can be worked,
  And soon made certain.  To our good allies
  No risk attaches; merely to ourselves.

  FOX [touching a private bell]

  Sir, your unconscienced hardihood confounds me.
  And your mind’s measure of my character
  Insults it sorely.  By your late-sent lines
  Of specious import, by your bland address,
  I have been led to prattle hopefully
  With a cut-throat confessed!

    [The head constable and the secretary enter at the same moment.]

            Ere worse befall,
  Sir, up and get you gone most dexterously!
  Conduct this man: lose never sight of him [to the officer]
  Till haled aboard some anchor-weighing craft
  Bound to remotest coasts from us and France.

  GEVRILLIÈRE [unmoved]

  How you may handle me concerns me little.
  The project will as roundly ripe itself
  Without as with me.  Trusty souls remain,
  Though my far bones bleach white on austral shores!—
  I thank you for the audience.  Long ere this
  I might have reft your life!  Ay, notice here—

    [He produces a dagger; which is snatched from him.]

  They need not have done that!  Even had you risen
  To wrestle with, insult, strike, pinion me,
  It would have lain unused.  In hands like mine
  And my allies’, the man of peace is safe,
  Treat as he may our corporal tenement
  In his misreading of a moral code.

    [Exeunt GEVRILLIÈRE and the constable.]

  FOX

  Trotter, indeed you well may stare at me!
  I look warm, eh?—and I am windless, too;
  I have sufficient reason to be so.
  That dignified and pensive gentleman
  Was a bold bravo, waiting for his chance.
  He sketched a scheme for murdering Bonaparte,
  Either—as in my haste I understood—
  By shooting from a window as he passed,
  Or by some other wry and stealthy means
  That haunt sad brains which brood on despotism,
  But lack the tools to justly cope therewith!...
  On later thoughts I feel not fully sure
  If, in my ferment, I did right in this.
  No; hail at once the man in charge of him,
  And give the word that he is to be detained.

    [The secretary goes out.  FOX walks to the window in deep
    reflection till the secretary returns.]

  SECRETARY

  I was in time, sir.  He has been detained.

  FOX

  Now what does strict state-honour ask of me?—
  No less than that I bare this poppling plot
  To the French ruler and our fiercest foe!—
  Maybe ’twas but a hoax to pocket pay;
  And yet it can mean more...
  The man’s indifference to his own vague doom
  Beamed out as one exalted trait in him,
  And showed the altitude of his rash dream!—
  Well, now I’ll get me on to Downing Street,
  There to draw up a note to Talleyrand
  Retailing him the facts.—What signature
  Subscribed this desperate fellow when he wrote?

  SECRETARY

  “Guillet de la Gevrillière.”  Here it stands.

  FOX

  Doubtless it was a false one.  Come along.  [Looking out the window.]
  Ah—here’s Sir Francis Vincent: he’ll go with us.
  Ugh, what a twinge!  Time signals that he draws
  Towards the twelfth stroke of my working-day!
  I fear old England soon must voice her speech
  With Europe through another mouth than mine!

  SECRETARY

  I trust not, sir.  Though you should rest awhile.
  The very servants half are invalid
  From the unceasing labours of your post,
  And these cloaked visitors of every clime
  That market on your magnanimity
  To gain an audience morning, night, and noon,
  Leaving you no respite.

  FOX

            ’Tis true; ’tis true.—
  How I shall love my summer holiday
  At pleasant Saint-Ann’s Hill!

    [He leans on the secretary’s arm, and they go out.]

  THE ROUTE BETWEEN LONDON AND PARIS

    [A view now nocturnal, now diurnal, from on high over the Straits
    of Dover, and stretching from city to city.  By night Paris and
    London seem each as a little swarm of lights surrounded by a halo;
    by day as a confused glitter of white and grey.  The Channel
    between them is as a mirror reflecting the sky, brightly or
    faintly, as the hour may be.]

  SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

       What mean these couriers shooting shuttlewise
       To Paris and to London, turn and turn?

  RUMOURS [chanting in antiphons]

  I

  The aforesaid tidings fro the minister, spokesman in England’s
       cause to states afar,

  II

  Traverse the waters borne by one of such; and thereto Bonaparte’s
       responses are:

  I

  “The principles of honour and of truth which ever actuate the
       sender’s mind

  II

  “Herein are written largely!  Take our thanks: we read that
       this conjuncture undesigned

  I

  “Unfolds felicitous means of showing you that still our eyes
       are set, as yours, on peace,

  II

  “To which great end the Treaty of Amiens must be the ground-
       work of our amities.”

  I

  From London then: “The path to amity the King of England
       studies to pursue;

  II

  “With Russia hand in hand he is yours to close the long
       convulsions thrilling Europe through.”

  I

  Still fare the shadowy missioners across, by Dover-road and
       Calais Channel-track,

  II

  From Thames-side towers to Paris palace-gates; from Paris
       leisurely to London back.

  I

  Till thus speaks France: “Much grief it gives us that, being
       pledged to treat, one Emperor with one King,

  II

  “You yet have struck a jarring counternote and tone that keys
       not with such promising.

  I

  “In these last word, then, of this pregnant parle; I trust I
       may persuade your Excellency

  II

  “That in no circumstance, on no pretence, a party to our pact can
       Russia be.”

  SPIRIT SINISTER

  Fortunately for the manufacture of corpses by machinery Napoléon
  sticks to this veto, and so wards off the awkward catastrophe of
  a general peace descending upon Europe.  Now England.

  RUMOURS [continuing]

  I

  Thereon speeds down through Kent and Picardy, evenly as some
       southing sky-bird’s shade:

  II

  “We gather not from your Imperial lines a reason why our words
       should be reweighed.

  I

  “We hold Russia not as our ally that is to be: she stands fully-
       plighted so;

  II

  “Thus trembles peace upon this balance-point: will you that
       Russia be let in or no?”

  I

  Then France rolls out rough words across the strait: “To treat
       with you confederate with the Tsar,

  II

  “Presumes us sunk in sloughs of shamefulness from which we yet
       stand gloriously afar!

  I

  “The English army must be Flanders-fed, and entering Picardy with
       pompous prance,

  II

  “To warrant such!  Enough.  Our comfort is, the crime of further
       strife lies not with France.”

  SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

       Alas! what prayer will save the struggling lands,
       Whose lives are ninepins to these bowling hands?

  CHORUS OF RUMOURS

       France secretly with—Russia plights her troth!
       Britain, that lonely isle, is slurred by both.

  SPIRIT SINISTER

  It is as neat as an uncovered check at chess!  You may now mark
  Fox’s blank countenance at finding himself thus rewarded for the
  good turn done to Bonaparte, and at the extraordinary conduct of
  his chilly friend the Muscovite.

  SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

       His hand so trembles it can scarce retain
       The quill wherewith he lets Lord Yarmouth know
       Reserve is no more needed!

  SPIRIT IRONIC

  Now enters another character of this remarkable little piece—Lord
  Lauderdale—and again the messengers fly!

  SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

       But what strange figure, pale and noiseless, comes,
       By us perceived, unrecognized by those,
       Into the very closet and retreat
       Of England’s Minister?

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

                 The Tipstaff he
       Of the Will, the Many-masked, my good friend Death.—
       The statesman’s feeble form you may perceive
       Now hustled into the Invisible,
       And the unfinished game of Dynasties
       Left to proceed without him!

  SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

                 Here, then, ends
       My hope for Europe’s reason-wrought repose!
       He was the friend of peace—did his great best
       To shed her balms upon humanity;
       And now he’s gone!  No substitute remains.

  SPIRIT IRONIC

  Ay; the remainder of the episode is frankly farcical.  Negotiations
  are again affected; but finally you discern Lauderdale applying for
  passports; and the English Parliament declares to the nation that
  peace with France cannot be made.

  RUMOURS [concluding]

  I

  The smouldering dudgeon of the Prussian king, meanwhile, upon the
       horizon’s rim afar

  II

  Bursts into running flame, that all his signs of friendliness were
       met by moves for war.

  I

  Attend and hear, for hear ye faintly may, his manifesto made at
       Erfurt town,

  II

  That to arms only dares he now confide the safety and the honour
       of his crown!

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

       Draw down the curtain, then, and overscreen
       This too-protracted verbal fencing-scene;
       And let us turn to clanging foot and horse,
       Ordnance, and all the enginry of Force!

    [Clouds close over the perspective.]

  THE STREETS OF BERLIN

    [It is afternoon, and the thoroughfares are crowded with citizens
    in an excited and anxious mood.  A central path is left open for
    some expected arrival.

    There enters on horseback a fair woman, whose rich brown curls
    stream flutteringly in the breeze, and whose long blue habit
    flaps against the flank of her curvetting white mare.  She is
    the renowned LOUISA, QUEEN OF PRUSSIA, riding at the head of a
    regiment of hussars and wearing their uniform.  As she prances
    along the thronging citizens acclaim her enthusiastically.]

  SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

       Who is this fragile fair, in fighting trim?

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

       She is the pride of Prussia, whose resolve
       Gives ballast to the purpose of her spouse,
       And holds him to what men call governing.

  SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

       Queens have engaged in war; but war’s loud trade
       Rings with a roar unnatural, fitful, forced,
       Practised by woman’s hands!

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

                 Of her view
       The enterprise is that of scores of men,
       The strength but half-a-ones.

  SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

            Would fate had ruled
       The valour had been his, hers but the charm!

  SPIRIT OF RUMOUR

       But he has nothing on’t, and she has all.
       The shameless satires of the bulletins
       dispatched to Paris, thence the wide world through,
       Disturb the dreams of her by those who love her,
       And thus her brave adventurers for the realm
       Have blurred her picture, soiled her gentleness,
       And wrought her credit harm.

  FIRST CITIZEN [vociferously]

  Yes, by God: send and ultimatum to Paris, by God; that’s what we’ll
  do, by God.  The Confederation of the Rhine was the evil thought of
  an evil man bent on ruining us!

  SECOND CITIZEN

  This country double-faced and double-tongued,
  This France, or rather say, indeed, this Man—
  [Peoples are honest dealers in the mass]—
  This man, to sign a stealthy scroll with Russia
  That shuts us off from all indemnities,
  While swearing faithful friendship with our King,
  And, still professing our safe wardenry,
  To fatten other kingdoms at our cost,
  Insults us grossly, and makes Europe clang
  With echoes of our wrongs.  The little states
  Of this antique and homely German land
  Are severed from their blood-allies and kin—
  Hereto of one tradition, interest, hope—
  In calling lord this rank adventurer,
  Who’ll thrust them as a sword against ourselves.—
  Surely Great Frederick sweats within his tomb!

  THIRD CITIZEN

  Well, we awake, though we have slumbered long,
  And She is sent by Heaven to kindle us.

    [The QUEEN approaches to pass back again with her suite.  The
    vociferous applause is repeated.  They regard her as she nears.]

  To cry her Amazon, a blusterer,
  A brazen comrade of the bold dragoons
  Whose uniform she dons!  Her, whose each act
  Shows but a mettled modest woman’s zeal,
  Without a hazard of her dignity
  Or moment’s sacrifice of seemliness,
  To fend off ill from home!

  FOURTH CITIZEN [entering]

  The tidings fly that Russian Alexander
  Declines with emphasis to ratify
  The pact of his ambassador with France,
  And that the offer made the English King
  To compensate the latter at our cost
  Has not been taken.

  THIRD CITIZEN

            And it never will be!
  Thus evil does not always flourish, faith.
  Throw down the gage while god is fair to us;
  He may be foul anon!

  [A pause.]

  FIFTH CITIZEN [entering]

  Our ambassador Lucchesini is already leaving Paris.  He could stand
  the Emperor no longer, so the Emperor takes his place, has decided
  to order his snuff by the ounce and his candles by the pound, lest
  he should not be there long enough to use more.

    [The QUEEN goes by, and they gaze at here and at the escort of
    soldiers.]

  Haven’t we soldiers?  Haven’t we the Duke of Brunswick to command
  ’em?  Haven’t we provisions, hey?  Haven’t we fortresses and an
  Elbe, to bar the bounce of an invader?

    [The cavalcade passes out of sight and the crowd draws off.]

  FIRST CITIZEN

  By God, I must to beer and ’bacco, to soften my rage!

    [Exeunt citizens.]

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

       So doth the Will objectify Itself
       In likeness of a sturdy people’s wrath,
       Which takes no count of the new trends of time,
       Trusting ebbed glory in a present need.—
       What if their strength should equal not their fire,
       And their devotion dull their vigilance?—
       Uncertainly, by fits, the Will doth work
       In Brunswick’s blood, their chief, as in themselves;
       It ramifies in streams that intermit
       And make their movement vague, old-fashioned, slow
       To foil the modern methods counterposed!

    [Evening descends on the city, and it grows dusk.  The soldiers
    being dismissed from duty, some young officers in a frolic of
    defiance halt, draw their swords and whet them on the steps of
    the FRENCH AMBASSADOR’S residence as they pass.  The noise of
    whetting is audible through the street.]

  CHORUS OF THE PITIES [aerial music]

            The soul of a nation distrest
                 Is aflame,
            And heaving with eager unrest
                 In its aim
    To assert its old prowess, and stouten its chronicled fame!

  SEMICHORUS I

            It boils in a boisterous thrill
                 Through the mart,
            Unconscious well-nigh as the Will
                 Of its part:
   Would it wholly might be so, and feel not the forthcoming smart!

  SEMICHORUS II

            In conclaves no voice of reflection
                 Is heard,
            King, Councillors, grudge circumspection
                 A word,
    And victory is visioned, and seemings as facts are averred.

  CHORUS

            Yea, the soul of a nation distrest
                 Is aflame,
            And heaving with eager unrest
                 In its aim
    At supreme desperations to blazon the national name!

    [Midnight strikes, lights are extinguished one by one, and the
    scene disappears.]

  THE FIELD OF JENA

    [Day has just dawned through a grey October haze.  The French,
    with their backs to the nebulous light, loom out and show
    themselves to be already under arms; LANNES holding the centre,
    NEY the right, SOULT the extreme right, and AUGEREAU the left.
    The Imperial Guard and MURAT’S cavalry are drawn up on the
    Landgrafenberg, behind the centre of the French position.  In
    a valley stretching along to the rear of this height flows
    northward towards the Elbe the little river Saale, on which
    the town of Jena stands.

    On the irregular plateaux in front of the French lines, and almost
    close to the latter, are the Prussians un TAUENZIEN; and away on
    their right rear towards Weimar the bulk of the army under PRINCE
    HOHENLOHE.  The DUKE OF BRUNSWICK [father of the Princess of
    Wales] is twelve miles off with his force at Auerstadt, in the
    valley of the Ilm.

    Enter NAPOLÉON, and men bearing torches who escort him.  He moves
    along the front of his troops, and is lost to view behind the
    mist and surrounding objects.  But his voice is audible.]

  NAPOLÉON

  Keep you good guard against their cavalry,
  In past repute the formidablest known,
  And such it may be now; so asks our heed.
  Receive it, then, in square, unflinchingly.—
  Remember, men, last year you captured Ulm,
  So make no doubt that you will vanquish these!

  SOLDIERS

  Long live the Emperor!  Advance, advance!

  DUMB SHOW

  Almost immediately glimpses reveal that LANNES’ corps is moving
  forward, and amid an unbroken clatter of firelocks spreads out
  further and wider upon the stretch of country in front of the
  Landgrafenberg.  The Prussians, surprised at discerning in the
  fog such masses of the enemy close at hand, recede towards the
  Ilm.

  From PRINCE HOHENLOHE, who is with the body of the Prussians on
  the Weimar road to the south, comes perspiring the bulk of the
  infantry to rally the retreating regiments of TAUENZIEN, and he
  hastens up himself with the cavalry and artillery.  The action
  is renewed between him and NEY as the clocks of Jena strike ten.

  But AUGEREAU is seen coming to Ney’s assistance on one flank of
  the Prussians, SOULT bearing down on the other, while NAPOLÉON
  on the Landgrafenberg orders the Imperial Guard to advance.  The
  doomed Prussians are driven back, this time more decisively,
  falling in great numbers and losing many as prisoners as they
  reel down the sloping land towards the banks of the Ilm behind
  them.  GENERAL RUCHEL, in a last despairing effort to rally,
  faces the French onset in person and alone.  He receives a bullet
  through the chest and falls dead.

  The crisis of the struggle is reached, though the battle is not
  over.  NAPOLÉON, discerning from the Landgrafenberg that the
  decisive moment has come, directs MURAT to sweep forward with all
  his cavalry.  It engages the shattered Prussians, surrounds them,
  and cuts them down by thousands.

  From behind the horizon, a dozen miles off, between the din of guns
  in the visible battle, there can be heard an ominous roar, as of a
  second invisible battle in progress there.  Generals and other
  officers look at each other and hazard conjectures between whiles,
  the French with exultation, the Prussians gloomily.

  HOHENLOHE

  That means the Duke of Brunswick, I conceive,
  Impacting on the enemy’s further force
  Led by, they say, Davout and Bernadotte.
  God grant his star less lurid rays then ours,
  Or this too pregnant, hoarsely-groaning day
  Shall, ere its loud delivery be done,
  Have twinned disasters to the fatherland
  That fifty years will fail to sepulchre!

  Enter a straggler on horseback.

  STRAGGLER

  Prince, I have circuited by Auerstadt,
  And bring ye dazzling tidings of the fight,
  Which, if report by those who saw’t be true,
  Has raged thereat from clammy day-dawn on,
  And left us victors!

  HOHENLOHE

            Thitherward go I,
  And patch the mischief wrought upon us here!

  Enter a second and then a third straggler.

  Well, wet-faced men, whence come ye?  What d’ye bring?

  STRAGGLER II

  Your Highness, I rode straight from Hassenhausen,
  Across the stream of battle as it boiled
  Betwixt that village and the banks of Saale,
  And such the turmoil that no man could speak
  On what the issue was!

  HOHENLOHE [To Straggler III]

       Can you add aught?

  STRAGGLER III

  Nothing that’s clear, your Highness.

  HOHENLOHE

            Man, your mien
  Is that of one who knows, but will not say.
  Detain him here.

  STRAGGLER III

            The blackness of my news,
  Your Highness, darks my sense!... I saw this much:
  His charging grenadiers, received in the face
  A grape-shot stroke that gouged out half of it,
  Proclaiming then and there his life fordone.

  HOHENLOHE

  Fallen?  Brunswick!  Reed in council, rock in fire...
  Ah, this he looked for.  Many a time of late
  Has he, by some strange gift of foreknowing,
  Declared his fate was hovering in such wise!

  STRAGGLER III

  His aged form being borne beyond the strife,
  The gallant Moellendorf, in flushed despair,
  Swore he would not survive; and, pressing on,
  He, too, was slaughtered.  Patriotic rage
  Brimmed marshals’ breasts and men’s.  The King himself
  Fought like the commonest.  But nothing served.
  His horse is slain; his own doom yet unknown.
  Prince William, too, is wounded.  Brave Schmettau
  Is broke; himself disabled.  All give way,
  And regiments crash like trees at felling-time!

  HOHENLOHE

  No more.  We match it here.  The yielding lines
  Still sweep us backward.  Backward we must go!

    [Exeunt HOHENLOHE, Staff, stragglers, etc.]

  The Prussian retreat from Jena quickens to a rout, many thousands
  taken prisoners by MURAT, who pursues them to Weimar, where the
  inhabitants fly shrieking through the streets.

  The October day closes in to evening.  By this time the troops
  retiring with the King of Prussia from the second battlefield
  of Auerstadt have intersected RUCHEL’S and HOHENLOHE’S flying
  battalions from Jena.  The crossing streams of fugitives strike
  panic into each other, and the tumult increases with the
  thickening darkness till night renders the scene invisible,
  and nothing remains but a confused diminishing noise, and fitful
  lights here and there.

  BERLIN.  A ROOM OVERLOOKING A PUBLIC PLACE

    [A fluttering group of ladies is gathered at the window, gazing
    out and conversing anxiously.  The time draws towards noon, when
    the clatter of a galloping horse’s hoofs is heard echoing up the
    long Potsdamer-Strasse, and presently turning into the Leipziger-
    Strasse reaches the open space commanded by the ladies’ outlook.
    It ceases before a Government building opposite them, and the
    rider disappears into the courtyard.]

  FIRST LADY

  Yes: surely he is a courier from the field!

  SECOND LADY

  Shall we not hasten down, and take from him
  The doom his tongue may deal us?

  THIRD LADY

            We shall catch
  As soon by watching here as hastening hence
  The tenour of his new.  [They wait.]  Ah, yes: see—see
  The bulletin is straightway to be nailed!
  He was, then, from the field....

    [They wait on while the bulletin is affixed.]

  SECOND LADY

  I cannot scan the words the scroll proclaims;
  Peer as I will, these too quick-thronging dreads
  Bring water to the eyes.  Grant us, good Heaven,
  That victory be where she is needed most
  To prove Thy goodness!... What do you make of it?

  THIRD LADY [reading, through a glass]

  “The battle strains us sorely; but resolve
  May save us even now.  Our last attack
  Has failed, with fearful loss.  Once more we strive.”

    [A long silence in the room.  Another rider is heard approaching,
    above the murmur of the gathering citizens.  The second lady
    looks out.]

  SECOND LADY

  A straggler merely he.... But they decide,
  At last, to post his news, wild-winged or no.

  THIRD LADY [reading again through her glass]

  “The Duke of Brunswick, leading on a charge,
  Has met his death-doom.  Schmettau, too, is slain;
  Prince William wounded.  But we stand as yet,
  Engaging with the last of our reserves.”

    [The agitation in the street communicates itself to the room.
    Some of the ladies weep silently as they wait, much longer this
    time.  Another horseman is at length heard clattering into the
    Platz, and they lean out again with painful eagerness.]

  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.]

  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.

  SECOND LADY

            He comes even now
  From sacrilege.  I learn that, since the fight,
  In marching here by Potsdam yesterday,
  Sans-Souci Palace drew his curious feet,
  Where even great Frederick’s tomb was bared to him.

  FOURTH LADY

  All objects on the Palace—cared for, kept
  Even as they were when our arch-monarch died—
  The books, the chair, the inkhorn, and the pen
  He quizzed with flippant curiosity;
  And entering where our hero’s bones are urned
  He seized the sword and standards treasured there,
  And with a mixed effrontery and regard
  Declared they should be all dispatched to Paris
  As gifts to the Hotel des Invalides.

  THIRD LADY

  Such rodomontade is cheap: what matters it!

    [A galaxy of marshals, forming Napoléon’s staff, now enters the
    Platz immediately before the windows.  In the midst rides the
    EMPEROR himself.  The ladies are silent.  The procession passes
    along the front until it reaches the entrance to the Royal Palace.
    At the door NAPOLÉON descends from his horse and goes into the
    building amid the resonant trumpetings of his soldiers and the
    silence of the crowd.]

  SECOND LADY [impressed]

  O why does such a man debase himself
  By countenancing loud scurrility
  Against a queen who cannot make reprise!
  A power so ponderous needs no littleness—
  The last resort of feeble desperates!

    [Enter fifth lady.]

  FIFTH LADY [breathlessly]

  Humiliation grows acuter still.
  He placards rhetoric to his soldiery
  On their distress of us and our allies,
  Declaring he’ll not stack away his arms
  Till he has choked the remaining foes of France
  In their own gainful glut.—Whom means he, think you?

  FIRST LADY

  Us?

  THIRD LADY

       Russia?  Austria?

  FIFTH LADY

            Neither: England.—Yea,
  Her he still holds the master mischief-mind,
  And marrer of the countries’ quietude,
  By exercising untold tyranny
  Over all the ports and seas.

  SECOND LADY

            Then England’s doomed!
  When he has overturned the Russian rule,
  England comes next for wrack.  They say that know!...
  Look—he has entered by the Royal doors
  And makes the Palace his.—Now let us go!—
  Our course, alas! is—whither?

    [Exeunt ladies.  The curtain drops temporarily.]

  SEMICHORUS I OF IRONIC SPIRITS [aerial music]

       Deeming himself omnipotent
       With the Kings of the Christian continent,
       To warden the waves was his further bent.

  SEMICHORUS II

       But the weaving Will from eternity,
       [Hemming them in by a circling sea]
       Evolved the fleet of the Englishry.

  SEMICHORUS I

       The wane of his armaments ill-advised,
       At Trafalgar, to a force despised,
       Was a wound which never has cicatrized.

  SEMICHORUS II

       This, O this is the cramp that grips!
       And freezes the Emperor’s finger-tips
       From signing a peace with the Land of Ships.

  CHORUS

       The Universal-empire plot
       Demands the rule of that wave-walled spot;
       And peace with England cometh not!

  THE SCENE REOPENS

    [A lurid gloom now envelops the Platz and city; and Bonaparte
    is heard as from the Palace:

  VOICE OF NAPOLÉON

  These monstrous violations being in train
  Of law and national integrities
  By English arrogance in things marine,
  [Which dares to capture simple merchant-craft,
  In honest quest of harmless merchandize,
  For crime of kinship to a hostile power]
  Our vast, effectual, and majestic strokes
  In this unmatched campaign, enable me
  To bar from commerce with the Continent
  All keels of English frame.  Hence I decree:—

  SPIRIT OF RUMOUR

       This outlines his renowned “Berlin Decree.”
        Maybe he meditates its scheme in sleep,
       Or hints it to his suite, or syllables it
       While shaping, to his scribes.

  VOICE OF NAPOLÉON

  All England’s ports to suffer strict blockade;
  All traffic with that land to cease forthwith;
  All natives of her isles, wherever met,
  To be detained as windfalls of the war.
  All chattels of her make, material, mould,
  To be good prize wherever pounced upon:
  And never a bottom hailing from her shores
  But shall be barred from every haven here.
  This for her monstrous harms to human rights,
  And shameless sauciness to neighbour powers!

  SPIRIT SINISTER

  I spell herein that our excellently high-coloured drama is not
  played out yet!

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

       Nor will it be for many a month of moans,
       And summer shocks, and winter-whitened bones.

    [The night gets darker, and the Palace outlines are lost.]

  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.]