Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (1056 page)

DUCHESS OF MONTEBELLO

It is as I expected.  A healthy young woman of her build had every

chance of doing well, despite the doctors.

[An interval.]

NAPOLEON
[re-entering radiantly]

We have achieved a healthy heir, good dames,

And in the feat the Empress was most brave,

Although she suffered much—so much, indeed,

That I would sooner father no more sons

Than have so fair a fruit-tree undergo

Another wrenching of such magnitude.

[He walks to the window, pulls aside the curtains, and looks out.

It is a joyful spring morning.  The Tuileries' gardens are thronged

with an immense crowd, kept at a little distance off the Palace by

a cord.  The windows of the neighbouring houses are full of gazers,

and the streets are thronged with halting carriages, their inmates

awaiting the event.]

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
[whispering to Napoleon]

At this high hour there broods a woman nigh,

Ay, here in Paris, with her child and thine,

Who might have played this part with truer eye

To thee and to thy contemplated line!

NAPOLEON
[soliloquizing]

Strange that just now there flashes on my soul

That little one I loved in Warsaw days,

Marie Walewska, and my boy by her!—

She was shown faithless by a foul intrigue

Till fate sealed up her opportunity....

But what's one woman's fortune more or less

Beside the schemes of kings!—Ah, there's the new!

[A gun is heard from the Invalides.]

CROWD
[excitedly]

One!

[Another report of the gun, and another, succeed.]

Two!  Three!  Four!

[The firing and counting proceed to twenty-one, when there is great

suspense.  The gun fires again, and the excitement is doubled.]

Twenty-two!  A boy!

[The remainder of the counting up to a hundred-and-one is drowned

in the huzzas.  Bells begin ringing, and from the Champ de Mars a

balloon ascends, from which the tidings are scattered in hand-bills

as it floats away from France.

Enter the PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE, CAMBACERES, BERTHIER, LEBRUN,

and other officers of state.  NAPOLEON turns from the window.]

CAMBACERES

Unstinted gratulations and goodwill

We bring to your Imperial Majesty,

While still resounds the superflux of joy

With which your people welcome this live star

Upon the horizon of history!

PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE

All blessings at their goodliest will grace

The advent of this New Messiah, sire,

Of fairer prospects than the former one,

Whose coming at so apt an hour endues

The widening glory of your high exploits

With permanence, and flings the dimness far

That cloaked the future of our chronicle!

NAPOLEON

My thanks; though, gentlemen, upon my soul

You might have drawn the line at the Messiah.

But I excuse you.—Yes, the boy has come;

He took some coaxing, but he's here at last.—

And what news brings the morning from without?

I know of none but this the Empress now

Trumps to the world from the adjoining room.

PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE

Nothing in Europe, sire, that can compare

In magnitude therewith to more effect

Than with an eagle some frail finch or wren.

To wit: the ban on English trade prevailing,

Subjects our merchant-houses to such strain

That many of the best see bankruptcy

Like a grim ghost ahead.  Next week, they say

In secret here, six of the largest close.

NAPOLEON

It shall not be!  Our burst of natal joy

Must not be sullied by so mean a thing:

Aid shall be rendered.  Much as we may suffer,

England must suffer more, and I am content.

What has come in from Spain and Portugal?

BERTHIER

Vaguely-voiced rumours, sire, but nothing more,

Which travel countries quick as earthquake thrills,

No mortal knowing how.

NAPOLEON

Of Massena?

BERTHIER

Yea.  He retreats for prudence' sake, it seems,

Before Lord Wellington.  Dispatches soon

Must reach your Majesty, explaining all.

NAPOLEON

Ever retreating!  Why declines he so

From all his olden prowess?  Why, again,

Did he give battle at Busaco lately,

When Lisbon could be marched on without strain?

Why has he dallied by the Tagus bank

And shunned the obvious course?  I gave him Ney,

Soult, and Junot, and eighty thousand men,

And he does nothing.  Really it might seem

As though we meant to let this Wellington

Be even with us there!

BERTHIER

     His mighty forts

At Torres Vedras hamper Massena,

And quite preclude advance.

NAPOLEON

     O well—no matter:

Why should I linger on these haps of war

Now that I have a son!

[Exeunt NAPOLEON by one door and by another the PRESIDENT OF THE

SENATE, CAMBACERES, LEBRUN, BERTHIER, and officials.]

CHORUS OF IRONIC SPIRITS
[aerial music]

The Will Itself is slave to him,

And holds it blissful to obey!—

He said, "Go to; it is my whim

"To bed a bride without delay,

Who shall unite my dull new name

With one that shone in Caesar's day.

"She must conceive—you hear my claim?—

And bear a son—no daughter, mind—

Who shall hand on my form and fame

"To future times as I have designed;

And at the birth throughout the land

Must cannon roar and alp-horns wind!"

The Will grew conscious at command,

And ordered issue as he planned.

[The interior of the Palace is veiled.]

SCENE IV

SPAIN.  ALBUERA

[The dawn of a mid-May day in the same spring shows the village

of Albuera with the country around it, as viewed from the summit

of a line of hills on which the English and their allies are ranged

under Beresford.  The landscape swept by the eye includes to the

right foreground a hill loftier than any, and somewhat detached

from the range.  The green slopes behind and around this hill are

untrodden—though in a few hours to be the sanguinary scene of the

most murderous struggle of the whole war.

The village itself lies to the left foreground, with its stream

flowing behind it in the distance on the right.  A creeping brook

at the bottom of the heights held by the English joins the stream

by the village.  Behind the stream some of the French forces are

visible.  Away behind these stretches a great wood several miles

in area, out of which the Albuera stream emerges, and behind the

furthest verge of the wood the morning sky lightens momently.  The

birds in the wood, unaware that this day is to be different from

every other day they have known there, are heard singing their

overtures with their usual serenity.]

DUMB SHOW

As objects grow more distinct it can be perceived that some strategic

dispositions of the night are being completed by the French forces,

which the evening before lay in the woodland to the front of the

English army.  They have emerged during the darkness, and large

sections of them—infantry, cuirassiers, and artillery—have crept

round to BERESFORD'S right without his suspecting the movement, where

they lie hidden by the great hill aforesaid, though not more than

half-a-mile from his right wing.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

A hot ado goes forward here to-day,

If I may read the Immanent Intent

   From signs and tokens blent

With weird unrest along the firmament

Of causal coils in passionate display.

—Look narrowly, and what you witness say.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

I see red smears upon the sickly dawn,

And seeming drops of gore.  On earth below

Are men—unnatural and mechanic-drawn—

Mixt nationalities in row and row,

   Wheeling them to and fro

In moves dissociate from their souls' demand,

For dynasts' ends that few even understand!

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Speak more materially, and less in dream.

SPIRIT OF RUMOUR

I'll do it.... The stir of strife grows well defined

Around the hamlet and the church thereby:

Till, from the wood, the ponderous columns wind,

Guided by Godinot, with Werle nigh.

They bear upon the vill.  But the gruff guns

   Of Dickson's Portuguese

Punch spectral vistas through the maze of these!...

More Frenchmen press, and roaring antiphons

Of cannonry contuse the roofs and walls and trees.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Wrecked are the ancient bridge, the green spring plot,

the blooming fruit-tree, the fair flower-knot!

SPIRIT OF RUMOUR

Yet the true mischief to the English might

Is meant to fall not there.  Look to the right,

And read the shaping scheme by yon hill-side,

Where cannon, foot, and brisk dragoons you see,

With Werle and Latour-Maubourg to guide,

Waiting to breast the hill-brow bloodily.

BERESFORD now becomes aware of this project on his flank, and sends

orders to throw back his right to face the attack.  The order is not

obeyed.  Almost at the same moment the French rush is made, the

Spanish and Portuguese allies of the English are beaten beck, and

the hill is won.  But two English divisions bear from the centre of

their front, and plod desperately up the hill to retake it.

SPIRIT SINISTER

Now he among us who may wish to be

A skilled practitioner in slaughtery,

Should watch this hour's fruition yonder there,

And he will know, if knowing ever were,

How mortals may be freed their fleshly cells,

And quaint red doors set ope in sweating fells,

By methods swift and slow and foul and fair!

The English, who have plunged up the hill, are caught in a heavy

mist, that hides from them an advance in their rear of the lancers

and hussars of the enemy.  The lines of the Buffs, the Sixty-sixth,

and those of the Forty-eighth, who were with them, in a chaos of

smoke, steel, sweat, curses, and blood, are beheld melting down

like wax from an erect position to confused heaps.  Their forms

lie rigid, or twitch and turn, as they are trampled over by the

hoofs of the enemy's horse.  Those that have not fallen are taken.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

It works as you, uncanny Phantom, wist!...

Whose is that towering form

    That tears across the mist

To where the shocks are sorest?—his with arm

Outstretched, and grimy face, and bloodshot eye,

Like one who, having done his deeds, will die?

SPIRIT OF RUMOUR

He is one Beresford, who heads the fight

        For England here to-day.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

     He calls the sight

Despite itself!—parries yon lancer's thrust,

And with his own sword renders dust to dust!

The ghastly climax of the strife is reached; the combatants are

seen to be firing grape and canister at speaking distance, and

discharging musketry in each other's faces when so close that

their complexions may be recognized.  Hot corpses, their mouths

blackened by cartridge-biting, and surrounded by cast-away

knapsacks, firelocks, hats, stocks, flint-boxes, and priming

horns, together with red and blue rags of clothing, gaiters,

epaulettes, limbs and viscera accumulate on the slopes, increasing

from twos and threes to half-dozens, and from half-dozens to heaps,

which steam with their own warmth as the spring rain falls gently

upon them.

The critical instant has come, and the English break.  But a

comparatively fresh division, with fusileers, is brought into the

turmoil by HARDINGE and COLE, and these make one last strain to

save the day, and their names and lives.  The fusileers mount the

incline, and issuing from the smoke and mist startle the enemy by

their arrival on a spot deemed won.

SEMICHORUS I OF THE PITIES
[aerial music]

They come, beset by riddling hail;

They sway like sedges is a gale;

The fail, and win, and win, and fail.  Albuera!

SEMICHORUS II

They gain the ground there, yard by yard,

Their brows and hair and lashes charred,

Their blackened teeth set firm and hard.

SEMICHORUS I

Their mad assailants rave and reel,

And face, as men who scorn to feel,

The close-lined, three-edged prongs of steel.

SEMICHORUS II

Till faintness follows closing-in,

When, faltering headlong down, they spin

Like leaves.  But those pay well who win Albuera.

SEMICHORUS I

Out of six thousand souls that sware

To hold the mount, or pass elsewhere,