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Frederich Schiller - "The Thirty Years War, Book V."

Archbishop Wake - "Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Volume 4, Nicodemus"

Mrs. Humphry Ward - "The History of David Grieve"

Unknown - "The Bible, Douay Rheims, Book 13: 1 Paralipomenon"

The Dynasts

T >> Thomas Hardy >> The Dynasts





SPIRIT SINISTER

Come, Sprite, don't carry your ironies too far, or you may wake up
the Unconscious Itself, and tempt It to let all the gory clock-work
of the show run down to spite me!


DUMB SHOW (continuing)

The drums roll, and the men of the two nations part from their
comradeship at the Alberche brook, the dark masses of the French
army assembling anew. SIR ARTHUR WELLESLEY has seated himself on
a mound that commands a full view of the contested hill, and
remains there motionless a long time. When the French form for
battle he is seen to have come to a conclusion. He mounts, gives
his orders, and the aides ride off.

The French advance steadily through the sultry atmosphere, the
skirmishers in front, and the columns after, moving, yet seemingly
motionless. Their eighty cannon peal out and their shots mow every
space in the line of them. Up the great valley and the terraces of
the hill whose fame is at that moment being woven, comes VILLATE,
boring his way with foot and horse, and RUFFIN'S men following
behind.

According to the order given, the Twenty-third Light Dragoons and
the German Hussars advance at a chosen moment against the head of
these columns. On the way they disappear.


SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Why this bedevilment? What can have chanced?


SPIRIT OF RUMOUR

It so befalls that as their chargers near
The inimical wall of flesh with its iron frise,
A treacherous chasm uptrips them: zealous men
And docile horses roll to dismal death
And horrid mutilation.


SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Those who live
Even now advance! I'll see no more. Relate.


SPIRIT OF RUMOUR

Yes, those pant on. Then further Frenchmen cross,
And Polish Lancers, and Westphalian Horse,
Who ring around these luckless Islanders,
And sweep them down like reeds by the river-bank
In scouring floods; till scarce a man remains.


Meanwhile on the British right SEBASTIANI'S corps has precipitated
itself in column against GENERAL CAMPBELL'S division, the division
of LAPISSE against the centre, and at the same time the hill on the
English left is again assaulted. The English and their allies are
pressed sorely here, the bellowing battery tearing lanes through
their masses.


SPIRIT OF RUMOUR (continuing)

The French reserves of foot and horse now on,
Smiting the Islanders in breast and brain
Till their mid-lines are shattered. . . . Now there ticks
The moment of the crisis; now the next,
Which brings the turning stroke.


SIR ARTHUR WELLESLEY sends down the Forty-eighth regiment under
COLONEL DONELLAN to support the wasting troops. It advances amid
those retreating, opening to let them pass.


SPIRIT OF THE RUMOUR (continuing)

The pales, enerved,
The hitherto unflinching enemy!
Lapisse is pierced to death; the flagging French
Decline into the hollows whence they came.
The too exhausted English and reduced
Lack strength to follow.--Now the western sun,
Conning with unmoved visage quick and dead,
Gilds horsemen slackening, and footmen stilled,
Till all around breathes drowsed hostility.

Last, the swealed herbage lifts a leering light,
And flames traverse the field; and hurt and slain
Opposed, opposers, in a common plight
Are scorched together on the dusk champaign.


The fire dies down, and darkness enwraps the scene.



SCENE VI

BRIGHTON. THE ROYAL PAVILION

[It is the birthday dinner-party of the PRINCE OF WALES. In the
floridly decorated banqueting-room stretch tables spread with gold
and silver plate, and having artificial fountains in their midst.

Seated at the tables are the PRINCE himself as host--rosy, well
curled, and affable--the DUKES OF YORK, CLARENCE, KENT, SUSSEX,
CUMBERLAND, and CAMBRIDGE, with many noblemen, including LORDS
HEADFORT, BERKELEY, EGREMONT, CHICHESTER, DUDLEY, SAY AND SELE,
SOUTHAMPTON, HEATHFIELD, ERSKINE, KEITH, C. SOMERSET, G. CAVENDISH,
R. SEYMOUR, and others; SIR C. POLE, SIR E.G. DE CRESPIGNY, MR.
SHERIDAN; Generals, Colonels, and Admirals, and the REV. MR. SCOTT.

The PRINCE'S band plays in the adjoining room. The banquet is
drawing to its close, and a boisterous conversation is in progress.

Enter COLONEL BLOOMFIELD with a dispatch for the PRINCE, who looks
it over amid great excitement in the company. In a few moments
silence is called.]


PRINCE OF WALES

I have the joy, my lords and gentlemen,
To rouse you with the just imported tidings
From General Wellesley through Lord Castlereagh
Of a vast victory (noisy cheers) over the French in Spain.
The place--called Talavera de la Reyna
(If I pronounce it rightly)--long unknown,
Wears not the crest and blazonry of fame! (Cheers.)
The heads and chief contents of the dispatch
I read you as succinctly as I can. (Cheers.)


SHERIDAN (singing sotto voce)

"Now foreign foemen die and fly,
Dammy, we'll drink little England dry!"

[The PRINCE reads the parts of the dispatch that describe the
battle, amid intermittent cheers.]


PRINCE OF WALES (continuing)

Such is the substance of the news received,
Which, after Wagram, strikes us genially
As sudden sunrise through befogged night shades!


SHERIDAN (privately)

By God, that's good, sir! You are a poet born, while the rest of us
are but made, and bad at that.

[The health of the army in Spain is drunk with acclamations.]


PRINCE OF WALES (continuing)

In this achievement we, alas! have lost
Too many! Yet suck blanks must ever be.--
Mackenzie, Langworth, Beckett of the Guards,
Have fallen of ours; while of the enemy
Generals Lapisse and Morlot are laid low.--
Drink to their memories!

[They drink in silence.]

Other news, my friends,
Received to-day is of like hopeful kind.
The Great War-Expedition to the Scheldt (Cheers.)
Which lately sailed, has found a favouring wind,
And by this hour has touched its destined shores.
The enterprise will soon be hot aglow,
The invaders making first the Cadsand coast,
And then descending on Walcheren Isle.
But items of the next step are withheld
Till later days, from obvious policy. (Cheers.)

[Faint throbbing sounds, like the notes of violincellos and
contrabassos, reach the ear from some building without as the
speaker pauses.

In worthy emulation of us here
The county holds to-night a birthday ball,
Which flames with all the fashion of the town.
I have been asked to patronize their revel,
And sup with them, and likewise you, my guests.
We have good reason, with such news to bear!
Thither we haste and join our loyal friends,
And stir them with this live intelligence
Of our staunch regiments on the Spanish plains. (Applause.)
With them we'll now knit hands and beat the ground,
And bring in dawn as we whirl round and round!
There are some fair ones in their set to-night,
And such we need here in our bachelor-plight. (Applause.)

[The PRINCE, his brothers, and a large proportion of the other
Pavilion guests, swagger out in the direction of the Castle
assembly-rooms adjoining, and the deserted banqueting-hall grows
dark. In a few moments the back of the scene opens, revealing
the assembly-rooms behind.]



SCENE VII

THE SAME. THE ASSEMBLY ROOMS

[The rooms are lighted with candles in brass chandeliers, and a
dance is in full movement to the strains of a string-band. A
signal is given, shortly after the clock has struck eleven, by
MR. FORTH, Master of Ceremonies.]


FORTH

His Royal Highness comes, though somewhat late,
But never too late for welcome! (Applause.) Dancers, stand,
That we may do fit homage to the Prince
Who soon may shine our country's gracious king.


[After a brief stillness a commotion is heard at the door, the band
strikes up the National air, and the PRINCE enters, accompanied by
the rest of the visitors from the Pavilion. The guests who have
been temporarily absent now crowd in, till there is hardly space
to stand.]


PRINCE OF WALES (wiping his face and whispering to Sheridan)

What shall I say to fit their feeling here?
Damn me, that other speech has stumped me quite!


SHERIDAN (whispering)

If heat be evidence of loy---


PRINCE OF WALES

If what?


SHERIDAN

If heat be evidence of loyalty,
Et caetera--something quaint like that might please 'em.


PRINCE OF WALES (to the company)

If heat be evidence of loyalty,
This room affords it truly without question;
If heat be not, then its accompaniment
Most surely 'tis to-night. The news I bring,
Good ladies, friends, and gentlemen, perchance
You have divined already? That our arms--
Engaged to thwart Napoleon's tyranny
Over the jaunty, jocund land of Spain
Even to the highest apex of our strength--
Are rayed with victory! (Cheers.) Lengthy was the strife
And fierce, and hot; and sore the suffering;
But proudly we endured it; and shall hear,
No doubt, of its far consequence
Ere many days. I'll read the details sent. (Cheers.)

[He reads again from the dispatch amid more cheering, the ball-
room guests crowding round. When he has done he answers questions;
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!(17)


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.


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!

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