ght like the commonest. But nothing served.
His horse is slain; his own doom yet unknown.
Prince William, too, is wounded. Brave Schmettau
Is broke; himself disabled. All give way,
And regiments crash like trees at felling-time!

HOHENLOHE

No more. We match it here. The yielding lines
Still sweep us backward. Backward we must go!

[Exeunt HOHENLOHE, Staff, stragglers, etc.]

The Prussian retreat from Jena quickens to a rout, many thousands
taken prisoners by MURAT, who pursues them to Weimar, where the
inhabitants fly shrieking through the streets.

The October day closes in to evening. By this time the troops
retiring with the King of Prussia from the second battlefield
of Auerstadt have intersected RUCHEL'S and HOHENLOHE'S flying
battalions from Jena. The crossing streams of fugitives strike
panic into each other, and the tumult increases with the
thickening darkness till night renders the scene invisible,
and nothing remains but a confused diminishing noise, and fitful
lights here and there.

SCENE V

BERLIN. A ROOM OVERLOOKING A PUBLIC PLACE

[A fluttering group of ladies is gathered at the window, gazing
out and conversing anxiously. The time draws towards noon, when
the clatter of a galloping horse's hoofs is heard echoing up the
long Potsdamer-Strasse, and presently turning into the Leipziger-
Strasse reaches the open space commanded by the ladies' outlook.
It ceases before a Government building opposite them, and the
rider disappears into the courtyard.]

FIRST LADY

Yes: surely he is a courier from the field!

SECOND LADY

Shall we not hasten down, and take from him
The doom his tongue may deal us?

THIRD LADY

We shall catch
As soon by watching here as hastening hence
The tenour of his new. [They wait.] Ah, yes: see--see
The bulletin is straightway to be nailed!
He was, then, from the field....

[They wait on while the bulletin is affixed.]

SECOND LADY

I cannot scan the words the scroll proclaims;
Peer as I will, these too quick-thronging dreads
Bring water to the eyes. Grant us, good Heaven,
That victory be where she is needed most
To prove Thy goodness!... What do you make of it?

THIRD LADY [reading, through a glass]

"The battle strains us sorely; but resolve
May save us even now. Our last attack
Has failed, with f