Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (1051 page)

NAPOLEON

I'll send Eugene to him, as you suggest.

Meanwhile prepare him.  Make your stand-point this:

Children are needful to my dynasty,

And if one woman cannot mould them for me,

Why, then, another must.

[Exit NAPOLEON abruptly.  Dancing continues.  MADAME METTERNICH

sits on, musing.  Enter SCHWARZENBERG.]

MADAME METTERNICH

The Emperor has just left me.  We have tapped

This theme and that; his empress and—his next.

Ay, so!  Now, guess you anything?

SCHWARZENBERG

     Of her?

No more than that the stock of Romanoff

Will not supply the spruce commodity.

MADAME METTERNICH

And that the would-be customer turns toe

To our shop in Vienna.

SCHWARZENBERG

     Marvellous;

And comprehensible but as the dream

Of Delaborde, of which I have lately heard.

It will not work!—What think you, madame, on't?

MADAME METTERNICH

That it will work, and is as good as wrought!—

I break it to you thus, at his request.

In brief time Prince Eugene will wait on you,

And make the formal offer in his name.

SCHWARZENBERG

Which I can but receive
ad referendum
,

And shall initially make clear as much,

Disclosing not a glimpse of my own mind!

Meanwhile you make good Metternich aware?

MADAME METTERNICH

I write this midnight, that amaze may pitch

To coolness ere your messenger arrives.

SCHWARZENBERG

This radiant revelation flicks a gleam

On many circling things!—the courtesies

Which graced his bearing toward our officer

Amid the tumults of the late campaign,

His wish for peace with England, his affront

At Alexander's tedious-timed reply...

Well, it will thrust a thorn in Russia's side,

If I err not, whatever else betide!

[Exeunt.  The maskers surge into the foreground of the scene, and

their motions become more and more fantastic.  A strange gloom

begins and intensifies, until only the high lights of their

grinning figures are visible.  These also, with the whole ball-

room, gradually darken, and the music softens to silence.]

SCENE II

PARIS.  THE TUILERIES

[The evening of the next day.  A saloon of the Palace, with

folding-doors communicating with a dining-room.  The doors are

flung open, revealing on the dining-table an untouched dinner,

NAPOLEON and JOSEPHINE rising from it, and DE BAUSSET, chamberlain-

in-waiting, pacing up and down.  The EMPEROR and EMPRESS come

forward into the saloon, the latter pale and distressed, and

patting her eyes with her handkerchief.

The doors are closed behind them; a page brings in coffee; NAPOLEON

signals to him to leave.  JOSEPHINE goes to pour out the coffee,

but NAPOLEON pushes her aside and pours it out himself, looking at

her in a way which causes her to sink cowering into a chair like a

frightened animal.]

JOSEPHINE

I see my doom, my friend, upon your face!

NAPOLEON

You see me bored by Cambaceres' ball.

JOSEPHINE

It means divorce!—a thing more terrible

Than carrying elsewhere the dalliances

That formerly were mine.  I kicked at that;

But now agree, as I for long have done,

To any infidelities of act

May I be yours in name!

NAPOLEON

     My mind must bend

To other things than our domestic petting:

The Empire orbs above our happiness,

And 'tis the Empire dictates this divorce.

I reckon on your courage and calm sense

To breast with me the law's formalities,

And get it through before the year has flown.

JOSEPHINE

But are you REALLY going to part from me?

O no, no, my dear husband; no, in truth,

It cannot be my Love will serve me so!

NAPOLEON

I mean but mere divorcement, as I said,

On simple grounds of sapient sovereignty.

JOSEPHINE

But nothing have I done save good to you:—

Since the fond day we wedded into one

I never even have THOUGHT you jot of harm!

Many the happy junctures when you have said

I stood as guardian-angel over you,

As your Dame Fortune, too, and endless things

Of such-like pretty tenour—yes, you have!

Then how can you so gird against me now?

You had not pricked upon it much of late,

And so I hoped and hoped the ugly spectre

Had been laid dead and still.

NAPOLEON
[impatiently]

     I tell you, dear,

The thing's decreed, and even the princess chosen.

JOSEPHINE

Ah—so—the princess chosen!... I surmise

It is none else than the Grand-Duchess Anne:

Gossip was right—though I would not believe.

She's young; but no great beauty!—Yes, I see

Her silly, soulless eyes and horrid hair;

In which new gauderies you'll forget sad me!

NAPOLEON

Upon my soul you are childish, Josephine:

A woman of your years to pout it so!—

I say it's not the Tsar's Grand-Duchess Anne.

JOSEPHINE

Some other Fair, then.  You whose name can nod

The flower of all the world's virginity

Into your bed, will well take care of that!

[Spitefully.]
  She may not have a child, friend, after all.

NAPOLEON
[drily]

You hope she won't, I know!—But don't forget

Madame Walewska did, and had she shown

Such cleverness as yours, poor little fool,

Her withered husband might have been displaced,

And her boy made my heir.—Well, let that be.

The severing parchments will be signed by us

Upon the fifteenth, prompt.

JOSEPHINE

     What—I have to sign

My putting away upon the fifteenth next?

NAPOLEON

Ay—both of us.

JOSEPHINE
[falling on her knees]

     So far advanced—so far!

Fixed?—for the fifteenth?  O I do implore you,

My very dear one, by our old, old love,

By my devotion, don't cast me off

Now, after these long years!

NAPOLEON

     Heavens, how you jade me!

Must I repeat that I don't cast you off;

We merely formally arrange divorce—

We live and love, but call ourselves divided.

[A silence.]

JOSEPHINE
[with sudden calm]

Very well.  Let it be.  I must submit! 
[Rises.]

NAPOLEON

And this much likewise you must promise me,

To act in the formalities thereof

As if you shaped them of your own free will.

JOSEPHINE

How can I—when no freewill's left in me?

NAPOLEON

You are a willing party—do you hear?

JOSEPHINE
[quivering]

I hardly—can—bear this!—It is—too much

For a poor weak and broken woman's strength!

But—but I yield!—I am so helpless now:

I give up all—ay, kill me if you will,

I won't cry out!

NAPOLEON

     And one thing further still,

You'll help me in my marriage overtures

To win the Duchess—Austrian Marie she,—

Concentrating all your force to forward them.

JOSEPHINE

It is the—last humiliating blow!—

I cannot—O, I will not!

NAPOLEON
[fiercely]

     But you SHALL!

And from your past experience you may know

That what I say I mean!

JOSEPHINE
[breaking into sobs]

O my dear husband—do not make me—don't!

If you but cared for me—the hundredth part

Of how—I care for you, you could not be

So cruel as to lay this torture on me.

It hurts me so!—it cuts me like a sword.

Don't make me, dear!  Don't, will you!  O,O,O!

[She sinks down in a hysterical fit.]

NAPOLEON
[calling]

Bausset!

[Enter DE BAUSSET, Chamberlain-in-waiting.]

     Bausset, come in and shut the door.

Assist me here.  The Empress has fallen ill.

Don't call for help.  We two can carry her

By the small private staircase to her rooms.

Here—I will take her feet.

[They lift JOSEPHINE between them and carry her out.  Her moans

die away as they recede towards the stairs.  Enter two servants,

who remove coffee-service, readjust chairs, etc.]

FIRST SERVANT

So, poor old girl, she's wailed her
Missere Mei
, as Mother Church

says.  I knew she was to get the sack ever since he came back.

SECOND SERVANT

Well, there will be a little civil huzzaing, a little crowing and

cackling among the Bonapartes at the downfall of the Beauharnais

family at last, mark me there will!  They've had their little hour,

as the poets say, and now 'twill be somebody else's turn.  O it is

droll!  Well, Father Time is a great philosopher, if you take him

right.  Who is to be the new woman?

FIRST SERVANT

She that contains in her own corporation the necessary particular.

SECOND SERVANT

And what may they be?

FIRST SERVANT

She must be young.

SECOND SERVANT

Good.  She must.  The country must see to that.

FIRST SERVANT

And she must be strong.

SECOND SERVANT

Good again.  She must be strong.  The doctors will see to that.

FIRST SERVANT

And she must be fruitful as the vine.

SECOND SERVANT

Ay, by God.  She must be fruitful as the vine.  That, Heaven help

him, he must see to himself, like the meanest multiplying man in

Paris.

[Exeunt servant.  Re-enter NAPOLEON with his stepdaughter, Queen

Hortense.]

NAPOLEON

Your mother is too rash and reasonless—

Wailing and fainting over statesmanship

Which is no personal caprice of mine,

But policy most painful—forced on me

By the necessities of this country's charge.

Go to her; see if she be saner now;

Explain it to her once and once again,

And bring me word what impress you may make.

[HORTENSE goes out.  CHAMPAGNY is shown in.]

Champagny, I have something clear to say

Now, on our process after the divorce.

The question of the Russian Duchess Anne

Was quite inept for further toying with.

The years rush on, and I grow nothing younger.

So I have made up my mind—committed me

To Austria and the Hapsburgs—good or ill!

It was the best, most practicable plunge,

And I have plunged it.

CHAMPAGNY

     Austria say you, sire?

I reckoned that but a scurrying dream!

NAPOLEON

Well, so it was.  But such a pretty dream

That its own charm transfixed it to a notion,

That showed itself in time a sanity,

Which hardened in its turn to a resolve

As firm as any built by mortal mind.—

The Emperor's consent must needs be won;

But I foresee no difficulty there.

The young Archduchess is a bright blond thing

By general story; and considering, too,

That her good mother childed seventeen times,

It will be hard if she can not produce

The modest one or two that I require.

[Enter DE BAUSSET with dispatches.]

DE BAUSSET

The courier, sire, from Petersburg is here,

And brings these letters for your Majesty.

[Exit DE BAUSSET.]

NAPOLEON
[after silently reading]

Ha-ha!  It never rains unless it pours:

Now I can have the other readily.

The proverb hits me aptly: "Well they do

Who doff the old love ere they don the new!"

[He glances again over the letter.]

Yes, Caulaincourt now writes he has every hope

Of quick success in settling the alliance!

The Tsar is willing—even anxious for it,

His sister's youth the single obstacle.

The Empress-mother, hitherto against me,

Ambition-fired, verges on suave consent,

Likewise the whole Imperial family.

What irony is all this to me now!

Time lately was when I had leapt thereat.

CHAMPAGNY

You might, of course, sire, give th' Archduchess up,

Seeing she looms uncertainly as yet,

While this does so no longer.

NAPOLEON

     No—not I.

My sense of my own dignity forbids

My watching the slow clocks of Muscovy!

Why have they dallied with my tentatives

In pompous silence since the Erfurt day?

—And Austria, too, affords a safer hope.

The young Archduchess is much less a child

Than is the other, who, Caulaincourt says,

Will be incapable of motherhood

For six months yet or more—a grave delay.

CHAMPAGNY

Your Majesty appears to have trimmed your sail

For Austria; and no more is to be said!

NAPOLEON

Except that there's the house of Saxony

If Austria fail.—then, very well, Champagny,

Write you to Caulaincourt accordingly.