The Dynasts: An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon Part 58

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 Napoleon's staff, now enters the Platz immediately before the windows. In the midst rides the EMPEROR himself. The ladies are silent. The procession pa.s.ses along the front until it reaches the entrance to the Royal Palace.

At the door NAPOLEON 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 NAPOLEON

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 NAPOLEON

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.