And peace with England cometh not!

THE SCENE REOPENS

[A lurid gloom now envelops the Platz and city; and Bonaparte
is heard as from the Palace:

VOICE OF NAPOLEON

These monstrous violations being in train
Of law and national integrities
By English arrogance in things marine,
[Which dares to capture simple merchant-craft,
In honest quest of harmless merchandize,
For crime of kinship to a hostile power]
Our vast, effectual, and majestic strokes
In this unmatched campaign, enable me
To bar from commerce with the Continent
All keels of English frame. Hence I decree:--

SPIRIT OF RUMOUR

This outlines his renowned "Berlin Decree."
Maybe he meditates its scheme in sleep,
Or hints it to his suite, or syllables it
While shaping, to his scribes.

VOICE OF NAPOLEON

All England's ports to suffer strict blockade;
All traffic with that land to cease forthwith;
All natives of her isles, wherever met,
To be detained as windfalls of the war.
All chattels of her make, material, mould,
To be good prize wherever pounced upon:
And never a bottom hailing from her shores
But shall be barred from every haven here.
This for her monstrous harms to human rights,
And shameless sauciness to neighbour powers!

SPIRIT SINISTER

I spell herein that our excellently high-coloured drama is not
played out yet!

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Nor will it be for many a month of moans,
And summer shocks, and winter-whitened bones.

[The night gets darker, and the Palace outlines are lost.]

SCENE VII

TILSIT AND THE RIVER NIEMEN

[The scene is viewed from the windows of BONAPARTE'S temporary
quarters. Some sub-officers of his suite are looking out upon
it.

It is the day after midsummer, about one o'clock. A multitude
of soldiery and spectators lines each bank of the broad river
which, stealing slowly north-west, bears almost exactly in its
midst a moored raft of bonded timber. On this as a floor stands
a gorgeous pavilion of draped woodwork, having at each side,
facing the respective banks of the stream, a round-headed doorway
richly festooned. The cumbersome erection acquires from the
current a rhythmical movement, as if it were breathing, and the
breeze now and then produces a shiver on the face of the stream.]

DUMB SHOW

On the south-