Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (1035 page)

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.

GEVRILLIERE

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?

GEVRILLIERE

     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?

GEVRILLIERE

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.

GEVRILLIERE
[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 GEVRILLIERE 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 Gevrilliere."  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.]

SCENE II

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 Napoleon

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.]

SCENE III

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