Part 3 - Act 3 - Scene 4. The Same. At The Thonberg Windmill

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_ PART THIRD. ACT THIRD. SCENE IV.

[By the newly lighted fire NAPOLEON is seen walking up and down, much agitated and worn. With him are MURAT, BERTHIER, AUGEREAU, VICTOR, and other marshals of corps that have been engaged in this part of the field--all perspiring, muddy, and fatigued.]

NAPOLEON

Baseness so gross I had not guessed of them!--
The thirty thousand false Bavarians
I looked on losing not unplacidly;
But these troth-swearing sober Saxonry
I reckoned staunch by virtue of their king!
Thirty-five thousand and gone! It magnifies
A failure into a catastrophe. . . .
Murat, we must retreat precipitately,
And not as hope had dreamed! Begin it then
This very hour.--Berthier, write out the orders.--
Let me sit down.

[A chair is brought out from the mill. NAPOLEON sinks into it, and BERTHIER, stooping over the fire, begins writing to the Emperor's dictation, the marshals looking with gloomy faces at the flaming logs.

NAPOLEON has hardly dictated a line when he stops short. BERTHIER turns round and finds that he has dropt asleep.]

MURAT (sullenly)

Far better not disturb him;
He'll soon enough awake!

[They wait, muttering to one another in tones expressing weary indifference to issues. NAPOLEON sleeps heavily for a quarter of and hour, during which the moon rises over the field. At the end he starts up stares around him with astonishment.]

NAPOLEON

Am I awake?
Or is this all a dream?--Ah, no. Too real! . . .
And yet I have seen ere now a time like this.

[The dictation is resumed. While it is in progress there can be heard between the words of NAPOLEON the persistent cries from the plain, rising and falling like those of a vast rookery far away, intermingled with the trampling of hoofs and the rumble of wheels. The bivouac fires of the engirdling enemy glow all around except for a small segment to the west--the track of retreat, still kept open by BERTRAND, and already taken by the baggage-waggons.

The orders for its adoption by the entire army being completed, NAPOLEON bids adieu to his marshals, and rides with BERTHIER and CAULAINCOURT into Leipzig. Exeunt also the others.]

SEMICHORUS I OF THE PITIES

Now, as in the dream of one sick to death,
There comes a narrowing room
That pens him, body and limbs and breath,
To wait a hideous doom,

SEMICHORUS II

So to Napoleon in the hush
That holds the town and towers
Through this dire night, a creeping crush
Seems inborne with the hours.

[The scene closes under a rimy mist, which makes a lurid cloud of
the firelights.] _

Read next: Part 3: Act 3: Scene 5. The Same. A Street Near The Ranstadt Gate

Read previous: Part 3: Act 3: Scene 3. The Same, From The Tower Of The Pleissenburg

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