Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (1050 page)

then continuing:

Meanwhile our interest is, if possible,

As keenly waked elsewhere.  Into the Scheldt

Some forty thousand bayonets and swords,

And twoscore ships o' the line, with frigates, sloops,

And gunboats sixty more, make headway now,

Bleaching the waters with their bellying sails;

Or maybe they already anchor there,

And that level ooze of Walcheren shore

Ring with the voices of that landing host

In every twang of British dialect,

Clamorous to loosen fettered Europe's chain!  [Cheers.]

A NOBLE LORD
[aside to Sheridan]

Prinny's outpouring tastes suspiciously like your brew, Sheridan.

I'll be damned if it is his own concoction.  How d'ye sell it a

gallon?

SHERIDAN

I don't deal that way nowadays.  I give the recipe, and charge a

duty on the gauging.  It is more artistic, and saves trouble.

[The company proceed to the supper-rooms, and the ball-room sinks

into solitude.]

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

So they pass on.  Let be!—But what is this—

A moan?—all frailly floating from the east

To usward, even from the forenamed isle?...

Would I had not broke nescience, to inspect

A world so ill-contrived!

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

     But since thou hast

We'll hasten to the isle; and thou'lt behold—

Such as it is—the scene its coasts enfold.

SCENE VIII

WALCHEREN

[A marshy island at the mouth of the Scheldt, lit by the low

sunshine of an evening in late summer.  The horizontal rays from

the west lie in yellow sheaves across the vapours that the day's

heat has drawn from the sweating soil.  Sour grasses grow in

places, and strange fishy smells, now warm, now cold, pass along.

Brass-hued and opalescent bubbles, compounded of many gases, rise

where passing feet have trodden the damper spots.  At night the

place is the haunt of the Jack-lantern.]

DUMB SHOW

A vast army is encamped here, and in the open spaces are infantry on

parade—skeletoned men, some flushed, some shivering, who are kept

moving because it is dangerous to stay still.  Every now and then

one falls down, and is carried away to a hospital with no roof, where

he is laid, bedless, on the ground.

In the distance soldiers are digging graves for the funerals which

are to take place after dark, delayed till then that the sight of

so many may not drive the living melancholy-mad.  Faint noises are

heard in the air.

SHADE OF THE EARTH

What storm is this of souls dissolved in sighs,

And what the dingy doom it signifies?

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

We catch a lamentation shaped thuswise:

CHORUS OF THE PITIES
[aerial music]

"We who withstood the blasting blaze of war

When marshalled by the gallant Moore awhile,

Beheld the grazing death-bolt with a smile,

Closed combat edge to edge and bore to bore,

          Now rot upon this Isle!

"The ever wan morass, the dune, the blear

Sandweed, and tepid pool, and putrid smell,

Emaciate purpose to a fractious fear,

Beckon the body to its last low cell—

          A chink no chart will tell.

"O ancient Delta, where the fen-lights flit!

Ignoble sediment of loftier lands,

Thy humour clings about our hearts and hands

And solves us to its softness, till we sit

          As we were part of it.

"Such force as fever leaves maddened now,

With tidings trickling in from day to day

Of others' differing fortunes, wording how

They yield their lives to baulk a tyrant's sway—

          Yield them not vainly, they!

"In champaigns green and purple, far and near,

In town and thorpe where quiet spire-cocks turn,

Through vales, by rocks, beside the brooding burn

Echoes the aggressor's arrogant career;

          And we pent pithless here!

"Here, where each creeping day the creeping file

Draws past with shouldered comrades score on score,

Bearing them to their lightless last asile,

Where weary wave-wails from the clammy shore

          Will reach their ears no more.

"We might have fought, and had we died, died well,

Even if in dynasts' discords not our own;

Our death-spot some sad haunter might have shown,

Some tongue have asked our sires or sons to tell

          The tale of how we fell;

"But such be chanced not.  Like the mist we fade,

No lustrous lines engrave in story we,

Our country's chiefs, for their own fames afraid,

Will leave our names and fates by this pale sea,

          To perish silently!"

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Why must ye echo as mechanic mimes

These mortal minion's bootless cadences,

Played on the stops of their anatomy

As is the mewling music on the strings

Of yonder ship-masts by the unweeting wind,

Or the frail tune upon this withering sedge

That holds its papery blades against the gale?

—Men pass to dark corruption, at the best,

Ere I can count five score: these why not now?—

The Immanent Shaper builds Its beings so

Whether ye sigh their sighs with them or no!

The night fog enwraps the isle and the dying English army.

ACT FIFTH

SCENE I

PARIS.  A BALLROOM IN THE HOUSE OF CAMBACERES

[The many-candled saloon at the ARCH-CHANCELLOR'S is visible

through a draped opening, and a crowd of masked dancers in

fantastic costumes revolve, sway, and intermingle to the music

that proceeds from an alcove at the further end of the same

apartment.  The front of the scene is a withdrawing-room of

smaller size, now vacant, save for the presence of one sombre

figure, that of NAPOLEON, seated and apparently watching the

moving masquerade.]

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Napoleon even now embraces not

From stress of state affairs, which hold him grave

Through revels that might win the King of Spleen

To toe a measure!  I would speak with him.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Speak if thou wilt whose speech nor mars nor mends!

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
[into Napoleon's ear]

Why thus and thus Napoleon?  Can it be

That Wagram with its glories, shocks, and shames,

Still leaves athirst the palate of thy pride?

NAPOLEON
[answering as in soliloquy]

The trustless, timorous lease of human life

Warns me to hedge in my diplomacy.

The sooner, then, the safer!  Ay, this eve,

This very night, will I take steps to rid

My morrows of the weird contingencies

That vision round and make one hollow-eyed....

The unexpected, lurid death of Lannes—

Rigid as iron, reaped down like a straw—

Tiptoed Assassination haunting round

In unthought thoroughfares, the near success

Of Staps the madman, argue to forbid

The riskful blood of my previsioned line

And potence for dynastic empery

To linger vialled in my veins alone.

Perhaps within this very house and hour,

Under an innocent mask of Love or Hope,

Some enemy queues my ways to coffin me....

When at the first clash of the late campaign,

A bold belief in Austria's star prevailed,

There pulsed quick pants of expectation round

Among the cowering kings, that too well told

What would have fared had I been overthrown!

So; I must send down shoots to future time

Who'll plant my standard and my story there;

And a way opens.—Better I had not

Bespoke a wife from Alexander's house.

Not there now lies my look.  But done is done!

[The dance ends and masks enter, BERTHIER among them.  NAPOLEON

beckons to him, and he comes forward.]

God send you find amid this motley crew

Frivolities enough, friend Berthier—eh?

My thoughts have worn oppressive shades despite such!

What scandals of me do they bandy here?

These close disguises render women bold—

Their shames being of the light, not of the thing—

And your sagacity has garnered much,

I make no doubt, of ill and good report,

That marked our absence from the capital?

BERTHIER

Methinks, your Majesty, the enormous tale

Of your campaign, like Aaron's serpent-rod,

Has swallowed up the smaller of its kind.

Some speak, 'tis true, in counterpoise thereto,

Of English deeds by Talavera town,

Though blurred by their exploit at Walcheren,

And all its crazy, crass futilities.

NAPOLEON

Yet was the exploit well featured in design,

Large in idea, and imaginative;

I had not deemed the blinkered English folk

So capable of view.  Their fate contrived

To place an idiot at the helm of it,

Who marred its working, else it had been hard

If things had not gone seriously for us.

—But see, a lady saunters hitherward

Whose gait proclaims her Madame Metternich,

One that I fain would speak with.

[NAPOLEON rises and crosses the room toward a lady-masker who has

just appeared in the opening.  BERTHIER draws off, and the EMPEROR,

unceremoniously taking the lady's arm, brings her forward to a

chair, and sits down beside her as dancing is resumed.]

MADAME METTERNICH

     In a flash

I recognized you, sire; as who would not

The bearer of such deep-delved charactery?

NAPOLEON

The devil, madame, take your piercing eyes!

It's hard I cannot prosper in a game

That every coxcomb plays successfully.

—So here you are still, though your loving lord

Disports him at Vienna?

MADAME METTERNICH

     Paris, true,

Still holds me; though in quiet, save to-night,

When I have been expressly prayed come hither,

Or I had not left home.

NAPOLEON

     I sped that Prayer!—

I have a wish to put a case to you,

Wherein a woman's judgment, such as yours,

May be of signal service. 
[He lapses into reverie.]

MADAME METTERNICH

Well?  The case—

NAPOLEON

Is marriage—mine.

MADAME METTERNICH

It is beyond me, sire!

NAPOLEON

You glean that I have decided to dissolve

[Pursuant to monitions murmured long]

My union with the present Empress—formed

Without the Church's due authority?

MADAME METTERNICH

Vaguely.  And that light tentatives have winged

Betwixt your Majesty and Russia's court,

To moot that one of their Grand Duchesses

Should be your Empress-wife.  Nought else I know.

NAPOLEON

There have been such approachings; more, worse luck.

Last week Champagny wrote to Alexander

Asking him for his sister—yes or no.

MADAME METTERNICH

What "worse luck" lies in that, your Majesty,

If severance from the Empress Josephine

Be fixed unalterably?

NAPOLEON

     This worse luck lies there:

If your Archduchess, Marie Louise the fair,

Would straight accept my hand, I'd offer it,

And throw the other over.  Faith, the Tsar

Has shown such backwardness in answering me,

Time meanwhile trotting, that I have ample ground

For such withdrawal.—Madame, now, again,

Will your Archduchess marry me of no?

MADAME METTERNICH

Your sudden questions quite confound my sense!

It is impossible to answer them.

NAPOLEON

Well, madame, now I'll put it to you thus:

Were you in the Archduchess Marie's place

Would you accept my hand—and heart therewith?

MADAME METTERNICH

I should refuse you—most assuredly!

NAPOLEON
[laughing roughly]

Ha-ha!  That's frank.  And devilish cruel too!

—Well, write to your husband.  Ask him what he thinks,

And let me know.

MADAME METTERNICH

     Indeed, sire, why should I?

There goes the Ambassador, Prince Schwarzenberg,

Successor to my spouse.  He's now the groove

And proper conduit of diplomacy

Through whom to broach this matter to his Court.

NAPOLEON

Do you, then, broach it through him, madame, pray;

Now, here, to-night.

MADAME METTERNICH

     I will, informally,

To humour you, on this recognizance,

That you leave not the business in my hands,

But clothe your project in official guise

Through him to-morrow; so safeguarding me

From foolish seeming, as the babbler forth

Of a fantastic and unheard of dream.