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_ PART SECOND. ACT SECOND. SCENE VI.
[It is the dusk of evening in the latter summer of this year, and from the windows at the back of the stage, which are still uncurtained, can be seen the EMPRESS with NAPOLEON and some ladies and officers of the Court playing Catch-me-if-you-can by torchlight on the lawn. The moving torches throw bizarre lights and shadows into the apartment, where only a remote candle or two are burning.
Enter JOSEPHINE and NAPOLEON together, somewhat out of breath. With careless suppleness she slides down on a couch and fans herself. Now that the candle-rays reach her they show her mellow complexion, her velvety eyes with long lashes, mouth with pointed corners and excessive mobility beneath its _duvet_, and curls of dark hair pressed down upon the temples by a gold band.
The EMPEROR drops into a seat near her, and they remain in silence till he jumps up, knocks over some nicknacks with his elbow, and begins walking about the boudoir.]
NAPOLEON (with sudden gloom)
These mindless games are very well, my friend;
But ours to-night marks, not improbably,
The last we play together.
JOSEPHINE (starting)
Can you say it!
Why raise that ghastly nightmare on me now,
When, for a moment, my poor brain had dreams
Denied it all the earlier anxious day?
NAPOLEON
Things that verge nigh, my simple Josephine,
Are not shoved off by wilful winking at.
Better quiz evils with too strained an eye
Than have them leap from disregarded lairs.
JOSEPHINE
Maybe 'tis true, and you shall have it so!--
Yet there's no joy save sorrow waived awhile.
NAPOLEON
Ha, ha! That's like you. Well, each day by day
I get sour news. Each hour since we returned
From this queer Spanish business at Bayonne,
I have had nothing else; and hence by brooding.
JOSEPHINE
But all went well throughout our touring-time?
NAPOLEON
Not so--behind the scenes. Our arms a Baylen
Have been smirched badly. Twenty thousand shamed
All through Dupont's ill-luck! The selfsame day
My brother Joseph's progress to Madrid
Was glorious as a sodden rocket's fizz!
Since when his letters creak with querulousness.
"Napoleon el chico" 'tis they call him--
"Napoleon the Little," so he says.
Then notice Austria. Much looks louring there,
And her sly new regard for England grows.
The English, next, have shipped an army down
To Mondego, under one Wellesley,
A man from India, and his march is south
To Lisbon, by Vimiero. On he'll go
And do the devil's mischief ere he is met
By unaware Junot, and chevyed back
To English fogs and fumes!
JOSEPHINE
My dearest one,
You have mused on worse reports with better grace
Full many and many a time. Ah--there is more! . . .
I know; I know!
NAPOLEON (kicking away a stool)
There is, of course; that worm
Time ever keeps in hand for gnawing me!--
The question of my dynasty--which bites
Closer and closer as the years wheel on.
JOSEPHINE
Of course it's that! For nothing else could hang
My lord on tenterhooks through nights and days;--
Or rather, not the question, but the tongues
That keep the question stirring. Nought recked you
Of throne-succession or dynastic lines
When gloriously engaged in Italy!
I was your fairy then: they labelled me
Your Lady of Victories; and much I joyed,
Till dangerous ones drew near and daily sowed
These choking tares within your fecund brain,--
Making me tremble if a panel crack,
Or mouse but cheep, or silent leaf sail down,
And murdering my melodious hours with dreads
That my late happiness, and my late hope,
Will oversoon be knelled!
NAPOLEON (genially nearing her)
But years have passed since first we talked of it,
And now, with loss of dear Hortense's son
Who won me as my own, it looms forth more.
And selfish 'tis in my good Josephine
To blind her vision to the weal of France,
And this great Empire's solidarity.
The grandeur of your sacrifice would gild
Your life's whole shape.
JOSEPHINE
Were I as coarse a wife
As I am limned in English caricature--
(Those cruel effigies they draw of me!)--
You could not speak more aridly.
NAPOLEON
Nay, nay!
You know, my comrade, how I love you still
Were there a long-notorious dislike
Betwixt us, reason might be in your dreads
But all earth knows our conjugality.
There's not a bourgeois couple in the land
Who, should dire duty rule their severance,
Could part with scanter scandal than could we.
JOSEPHINE (pouting)
Nevertheless there's one.
NAPOLEON
A scandal? What?
JOSEPHINE
Madame Walewska! How could you pretend
When, after Jena, I'd have come to you,
"The weather was so wild, the roads so rough,
That no one of my sex and delicate nerve
Could hope to face the dangers and fatigues."
Yes--so you wrote me, dear. They hurt not her!
NAPOLEON (blandly)
She was a week's adventure--not worth words!
I say 'tis France.--I have held out for years
Against the constant pressure brought on me
To null this sterile marriage.
JOSEPHINE (bursting into sobs)
Me you blame!
But how know you that you are not the culprit?
NAPOLEON
I have reason so to know--if I must say.
The Polish lady you have chosen to name
Has proved the fault not mine. (JOSEPHINE sobs more violently.)
Don't cry, my cherished;
It is not really amiable of you,
Or prudent, my good little Josephine,
With so much in the balance.
JOSEPHINE
How--know you--
What may not happen! Wait a--little longer!
NAPOLEON (playfully pinching her arm)
O come, now, my adored! Haven't I already!
Nature's a dial whose shade no hand puts back,
Trick as we may! My friend, you are forty-three
This very year in the world-- (JOSEPHINE breaks out sobbing again.)
And in vain it is
To think of waiting longer; pitiful
To dream of coaxing shy fecundity
To an unlikely freak by physicking
With superstitious drugs and quackeries
That work you harm, not good. The fact being so,
I have looked it squarely down--against my heart!
Solicitations voiced repeatedly
At length have shown the soundness of their shape,
And left me no denial. You, at times,
My dear one, have been used to handle it.
My brother Joseph, years back, frankly gave
His honest view that something should be done;
And he, you well know, shows no ill tinct
In his regard of you.
JOSEPHINE
And what princess?
NAPOLEON
For wiving with? No thought was given to that,
She shapes as vaguely as the Veiled--
JOSEPHINE
No, no;
It's Alexander's sister, I'm full sure!--
But why this craze for home-made manikins
And lineage mere of flesh? You have said yourself
It mattered not. Great Caesar, you declared,
Sank sonless to his rest; was greater deemed
Even for the isolation. Frederick
Saw, too, no heir. 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! . . .
Napoleon's offspring in his like must lie;
The second of his line be he who shows
Napoleon's soul in later bodiment,
The household father happening as he may!
NAPOLEON (smilingly wiping her eyes)
Little guessed I my dear would prove her rammed
With such a charge of apt philosophy
When tutoring me gay arts in earlier times!
She who at home coquetted through the years
In which I vainly penned her wishful words
To come and comfort me in Italy,
Might, faith, have urged it then effectually!
But never would you stir from Paris joys, (With some bitterness.)
And so, when arguments like this could move me,
I heard them not; and get them only now
When their weight dully falls. But I have said
'Tis not for me, but France--Good-bye an hour. (Kissing her.)
I must dictate some letters. This new move
Of England on Madrid may mean some trouble.
Come, dwell not gloomily on this cold need
Of waiving private joy for policy.
We are but thistle-globes on Heaven's high gales,
And whither blown, or when, or how, or why,
Can choose us not at all! . . .
I'll come to you anon, dear: staunch Roustan
Will light me in.
[Exit NAPOLEON. The scene shuts in shadow.] _
Read next: Part 2: Act 2: Scene 7. Vimiero
Read previous: Part 2: Act 2: Scene 5. The Open Sea Between English Coasts & Spanish Peninsula
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