Thomas Hardy

“ GEVRILLIÈRE The generous hope will never be fulfilled! Ceasing to bluff, then ceases he to be. None sees that written largelier than himself. FOX Then what may be the valued revelation That you can unlock in such circumstance? Sir, I incline to spell you as a spy, And not the honest help for honest men You gave you out to be! GEVRILLIÈRE I beg, sir, 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! ”

“ NAPOLÉON 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 Masséna, And quite preclude advance. NAPOLÉON O well—no matter: Why should I linger on these haps of war Now that I have a son! ”

“ NAPOLÉON and his staff reascend the hillock, and his own words as repeated to the ranks reach his ears, while he himself delivers the same address to those about him. NAPOLÉON Soldiers, wild war is on the board again; The lifetime-long alliance Russia swore At Tilsit, for the English realm’s undoing, Is violate beyond refurbishment, And she intractable and unashamed. Russia is forced on by fatality: She cries her destiny must be outwrought, Meaning at our expense. Does she then dream We are no more the men of Austerlitz, With nothing left of our old featfulness? ”

“ The French Ambassador, de Beauharnais, Has come, and sought the King. And next Murat, With thirty thousand men, half cavalry, Is closing in upon our doomed Madrid! I know not what he means, this Bonaparte; He makes pretence to gain us Portugal, But what want we with her? ’Tis like as not His aim’s to noose us vassals all to him! The King will abdicate, and shortly too, As those will live to see who live not long.— We have saved our nation from the Favourite, But who is going to save us from our Friend? ”

“ What will be seen in the morning light? What will be learnt when the spring breaks bright, And the frost unlocks to the sun’s soft sight? SEMICHORUS II Death in a thousand motley forms; Charred corpses hooking each other’s arms In the sleep that defies all war’s alarms! CHORUS Pale cysts of souls in every stage, Still bent to embraces of love or rage,— Souls passed to where History pens no page. The flames of the burning bridge go out as it consumes to the water’s edge, and darkness mantles all, nothing continuing but the purl of the river and the clickings of floating ice. ”

“ SCENE IX THE WOOD OF BOSSU [It is midnight. NAPOLÉON enters a glade of the wood, a solitary figure on a faded horse. The shadows of the boughs travel over his listless form as he moves along. The horse chooses its own path, comes to a standstill, and feeds. The tramp of BERTRAND, SOULT, DROUOT, and LOBAU’S horses, gone forward in hope to find a way of retreat, is heard receding over the hill.] NAPOLÉON [to himself, languidly] Here should have been some troops of Gerard’s corps, Left to protect the passage of the convoys, Yet they, too, fail.... I have nothing more to lose, But life! ”

“ SPIRIT Tales have two sides, Sweet lady. Vamped-up versions reach thee here.— That Austerlitz was lustrous none ignores, But would it shock thy garrulousness to know That the true measure of this Trafalgar— Utter defeat, ay, France’s naval death— Your Emperor bade be hid? WOMAN The seer’s gift Has never plenteously endowed me, sir, As in appearance you. But to plain sense Thing’s seem as stated. SPIRIT We’ll let seemings be.— But know, these English take to liquid life Right patly—nursed therefor in infancy By rimes and rains which creep into their blood, Till like seeks like. ”

“ SERVANT Waiting with the major’s spare hoss—up to my knees in mud from the rain that had come down like baccy-pipe stems all the night and morning—I have just seen a charge never beholded since the days of the Amalekites! The squares still stand, but Ney’s cavalry have made another attack. Their swords are streaming with blood, and their horses’ hoofs squash out our poor fellow’s bowels as they lie. A ball has sunk in Sir Thomas Picton’s forehead and killed him like Goliath the Philistine. I don’t see what’s to stop the French. Well, it’s the Lord’s doing and marvellous in our eyes. ”

“ Wrongly has Bonaparte’s late course been called A rude incursion on the soil of France.— Who ever knew a sole and single man Invade a nation thirty million strong, And gain in some few days full sovereignty Against the nation’s will!—The truth is this: The nation longed for him, and has obtained him.... I have beheld the agonies of war Through many a weary season; seen enough To make me hold that scarcely any goal Is worth the reaching by so red a road. No man can doubt that this Napoléon stands As Emperor of France by Frenchmen’s wills. Let the French settle, then, their own affairs ”

“ I am more than sad thereat! In brief time now the surgeon will be here. The French retreat—pushed from Elvina far. MOORE That’s good! Is Paget anywhere about? COLBORNE He’s at the front, Sir John. MOORE Remembrance to him! [Enter two surgeons.] Ah, doctors,—you can scarcely mend up me.— And yet I feel so tough—I have feverish fears My dying will waste a long and tedious while; But not too long, I hope! SURGEONS [after a hasty examination] You must be borne In to your lodgings instantly, Sir John. Please strive to stand the motion—if you can; They will keep step, and bear you steadily. ”

“ MARMONT Some sappers I have taken captive, sire, Say the Allies will be at stroke with us The morning next to to-morrow’s.—I am come, Now, from the steeple-top of Liebenthal, Where I beheld the enemy’s fires bespot The horizon round with raging eyes of flame:— My vanward posts, too, have been driven in, And I need succours—thrice ten thousand, say. NAPOLÉON [coldly] The enemy vexes not your vanward posts; You are mistaken.—Now, however, go; Cross Leipzig, and remain as the reserve.— Well, gentlemen, my hope herein is this: The first day to annihilate Schwarzenberg, The second Blücher. ”

“ The sky is still overcast, and rain still falls. A green expanse, almost unbroken, of rye, wheat, and clover, in oblong and irregular patches undivided by fences, covers the undulating ground, which sinks into a shallow valley between the French and English positions. The road from Brussels to Charleroi runs like a spit through both positions, passing at the back of the English into the leafy forest of Soignes. The latter are turning out from their bivouacs. They move stiffly from their wet rest, and hurry to and fro like ants in an ant-hill. ”

“ A bird’s eye view of the sea discloses itself. It is daybreak, and the broad face of the ocean is fringed on its eastern edge by the Cape and the Spanish shore. On the rolling surface immediately beneath the eye, ranged more or less in two parallel lines running north and south, one group from the twain standing off somewhat, are the vessels of the combined French and Spanish navies, whose canvases, as the sun edges upward, shine in its rays like satin. On the western horizon two columns of ships appear in full sail, small as moths to the aerial vision. ”

“ MÉNEVAL They are armed Europe’s scouts! [Enter CAMBACÉRÈS the Arch-Chancellor, COUNT BEAUHARNAIS, CORVISART the physician, DE BAUSSET, DE CANISY the equerry, and others.] CAMBACÉRÈS Your Majesty, There’s not a trice to lose. The force well-nigh Of all compacted Europe crowds on us, And clamours at the walls! BEAUHARNAIS If you stay longer, You stay to fall into the Cossacks hands. The people, too, are waxing masterful: They think the lingering of your Majesty Makes Paris more a peril for themselves Than a defence for you. To fight is fruitless, And wanton waste of life. ”

“ SPIRIT OF THE YEARS Sprite of Compassions, ask the Immanent! I am but an accessory of Its works, Whom the Ages render conscious; and at most Figure as bounden witness of Its laws. SPIRIT OF THE PITIES How ask the aim of unrelaxing Will? Tranced in Its purpose to unknowingness? [If thy words, Ancient Phantom, token true.] SPIRIT OF THE YEARS Thou answerest well. But cease to ask of me. Meanwhile the mime proceeds.—We turn herefrom, Change our homuncules, and observe forthwith How the High Influence sways the English realm, And how the jacks lip out their reasonings there. ”

“ Already are the seeds of mischief sown: The Declaration at Vienna, signed Against Napoléon, is, in my regard, Abhorrent, and our country’s character Defaced by our subscription to its terms! If words have any meaning it incites To sheer assassination; it proclaims That any meeting Bonaparte may slay him; And, whatso language the Allies now hold, In that outburst, at least, was war declared. The noble lord to-night would second it, Would seem to urge that we full arm, then wait For just as long, no longer, than would serve The preparations of the other Powers, And then—pounce down on France! ”

“ The winter is more merciless, and snow continues to fall upon a deserted expanse of unenclosed land in Lithuania. Some scattered birch bushes merge in a forest in the background. It is growing dark, though nothing distinguishes where the sun sets. There is no sound except that of a shuffling of feet in the direction of a bivouac. Here are gathered tattered men like skeletons. Their noses and ears are frost-bitten, and pus is oozing from their eyes. These stricken shades in a limbo of gloom are among the last survivors of the French army. ”

“ It is the fate of such, Often, to be denied the common hope As fine for fulness in the rarer gifts That Nature yields them. O my husband long, Will you not purge your soul to value best That high heredity from brain to brain Which supersedes mere sequence of blood, That often vary more from sire to son Than between furthest strangers!... Napoléon’s offspring in his like must lie; The second of his line be he who shows Napoléon’s soul in later bodiment, The household father happening as he may! ”

“ EMPRESS-MOTHER So one of Austrian blood his pomp selects To be his bride and bulwark—not our own. Thus are you coolly shelved! ALEXANDER Me, mother dear? You, faith, if I may say it dutifully! Had all been left to me, some time ere now He would have wedded Kate. EMPRESS-MOTHER How so, my son? Catharine was plighted, and it could not be. ALEXANDER Rather you swiftly pledged and married her, To let Napoléon have no chance that way. But Anne remained. EMPRESS-MOTHER How Anne?—so young a girl! Sane Nature would have cried indecency At such a troth. ”

“ Mack’s enterprise is now to cross Bavaria— Beneath us stretched in ripening summer peace As field unwonted for these ugly jars— Outraged Bavaria, simmering in disquiet At Munich down behind us, Isar-fringed, And torn between his fair wife’s hate of France And his own itch to gird at Austrian bluff For riding roughshod through his territory, Wavers from this to that. The while Time hastes The eastward streaming of Napoléon’s host, As soon we see. The silent insect-creep of the Austrian columns towards the banks of the Inn continues to be seen till the view fades to nebulousness and dissolves. ”

“ NAPOLÉON appears in his grey great-coat, and is much fatter than when he left France. BERTRAND sits beside him. He quickly alights and enters the waiting boat. It is a tense moment. As the boat rows off the sailors sing the Marseillaise, and the gathered inhabitants join in. When the boat reaches the brig its sailors join in also, and shout “Paris or death!” Yet the singing has a melancholy cadence. A gun fires as a signal of departure. The night is warm and balmy for the season. Not a breeze is there to stir a sail, and the ships are motionless. ”

“ NAPOLÉON If that be, You are no more a European power.— I would point out to him that my resources Are not confined to these my musters here; My prisoners of war, in route for France, Will see some marks of my resources there! Two hundred thousand volunteers, right fit, Will join my standards at a single nod, And in six weeks prove soldiers to the bone, Whilst you recruits, compulsion’s scavengings, Scarce weld to warriors after toilsome years. But I want nothing on this Continent: The English only are my enemies. ”

“ I, sire? It is not so. I stand and swear The grievous imputation is untrue. You should know better than believe these things, And well remember I have enemies Who ever wait to slander me to you! NAPOLÉON [more calmly] Ah yes, yes. That is so.—And yet—and yet You have deigned to weigh the feasibility Of treating me as Austria has done!... But I forgive you. You are a worthy man; You feel real friendship for me. You are brave. Yet I was wrong to make a king of you. If I had been content to draw the line At vice-king, as with young Eugène, no more, As he has laboured you’d have laboured, too! ”

“ SPIRIT IRONIC He bids La Bedoyere to speed away Along the whole sweep of the surging line, And there announce to the breath-shotten bands Who toil for a chimaera trustfully, With seventy pounds of luggage on their loins, That the dim Prussian masses seen afar Are Grouchy’s three-and-thirty thousand, come To clinch a victory. SPIRIT OF THE PITIES But Ney demurs! SPIRIT IRONIC Ney holds indignantly that such a feint Is not war-worthy. Says Napoléon then, Snuffing anew, with sour sardonic scowl, That he is choiceless. SPIRIT SINISTER Excellent Emperor! He tops all human greatness ”