________________________________________________
_ PART THIRD. ACT SEVENTH. SCENE IX.
[It is midnight. NAPOLEON 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.]
NAPOLEON (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!
[Flocks of fugitive soldiers pass along the adjoining road without seeing him. NAPOLEON'S head droops lower and lower as he sits listless in the saddle, and he falls into a fitful sleep. The moon shines upon his face, which is drawn and waxen.]
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
"Sic diis immortalibus placet,"--
"Thus is it pleasing to the immortal gods,"
As earthlings used to say. Thus, to this last,
The Will in thee has moved thee, Bonaparte,
As we say now.
NAPOLEON (starting)
Whose frigid tones are those,
Breaking upon my lurid loneliness
So brusquely? . . . Yet, 'tis true, I have ever know
That such a Will I passively obeyed!
[He drowses again.]
SPIRIT IRONIC
Nothing care I for these high-doctrined dreams,
And shape the case in quite a common way,
So I would ask, Ajaccian Bonaparte,
Has all this been worth while?
NAPOLEON
O hideous hour,
Why am I stung by spectral questionings?
Did not my clouded soul incline to match
Those of the corpses yonder, thou should'st rue
Thy saying, Fiend, whoever those may'st be! . . .
Why did the death-drops fail to bite me close
I took at Fontainebleau? Had I then ceased,
This deep had been umplumbed; had they but worked,
I had thrown threefold the glow of Hannibal
Down History's dusky lanes!--Is it too late? . . .
Yes. Self-sought death would smoke but damply here!
If but a Kremlin cannon-shot had met me
My greatness would have stood: I should have scored
A vast repute, scarce paralleled in time.
As it did not, the fates had served me best
If in the thick and thunder of to-day,
Like Nelson, Harold, Hector, Cyrus, Saul,
I had been shifted from this jail of flesh,
To wander as a greatened ghost elsewhere.
--Yes, a good death, to have died on yonder field;
But never a ball came padding down my way!
So, as it is, a miss-mark they will dub me;
And yet--I found the crown of France in the mire,
And with the point of my prevailing sword
I picked it up! But for all this and this
I shall be nothing. . . .
To shoulder Christ from out the topmost niche
In human fame, as once I fondly felt,
Was not for me. I came too late in time
To assume the prophet or the demi-god,
A part past playing now. My only course
To make good showance to posterity
Was to implant my line upon the throne.
And how shape that, if now extinction nears?
Great men are meteors that consume themselves
To light the earth. This is my burnt-out hour.
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
Thou sayest well. Thy full meridian-shine
Was in the glory of the Dresden days,
When well-nigh every monarch throned in Europe
Bent at thy footstool.
NAPOLEON
Saving always England's--
Rightly dost say "well-nigh."--Not England's,--she
Whose tough, enisled, self-centred, kindless craft
Has tracked me, springed me, thumbed me by the throat,
And made herself the means of mangling me!
SPIRIT IRONIC
Yea, the dull peoples and the Dynasts both,
Those counter-castes not oft adjustable,
Interests antagonistic, proud and poor,
Have for the nonce been bonded by a wish
To overthrow thee.
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
Peace. His loaded heart
Bears weight enough for one bruised, blistered while!
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
Worthless these kneadings of thy narrow thought,
Napoleon; gone thy opportunity!
Such men as thou, who wade across the world
To make an epoch, bless, confuse, appal,
Are in the elemental ages' chart
Like meanest insects on obscurest leaves,
But incidents and grooves of Earth's unfolding;
Or as the brazen rod that stirs the fire
Because it must.
[The moon sinks, and darkness blots out NAPOLEON and the scene.] _
Read next: Part 3: After Scene: The Overworld
Read previous: Part 3: Act 7: Scene 8. The Same. Later
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