west or Prussian side rides the EMPEROR NAPOLEON
in uniform, attended by the GRAND DUKE OF BERG, the PRINCE OF
NEUFCHATEL, MARSHAL BESSIERES, DUROC Marshal of the Palace, and
CAULAINCOURT Master of the Horse. The EMPEROR looks well, but is
growing fat. They embark on an ornamental barge in front of them,
which immediately puts off. It is now apparent to the watchers
that a precisely similar enactment has simultaneously taken place
on the opposite or Russian bank, the chief figure being the
EMPEROR ALEXANDER--a graceful, flexible man of thirty, with a
courteous manner and good-natured face. He has come out from
an inn on that side accompanied by the GRAND DUKE CONSTANTINE,
GENERAL BENNIGSEN, GENERAL OUWAROFF, PRINCE LABANOFF, and ADJUTANT-
GENERAL COUNT LIEVEN.

The two barges draw towards the raft, reaching the opposite sides
of it about the same time, amidst discharges of cannon. Each
Emperor enters the door that faces him, and meeting in the centre
of the pavilion they formally embrace each other. They retire
together to the screened interior, the suite of each remaining in
the outer half of the pavilion.

More than an hour passes while they are thus invisible. The French
officers who have observed the scene from the lodging of NAPOLEON
walk about idly, and ever and anon go curiously to the windows,
again to watch the raft.

CHORUS OF THE YEARS [aerial music]

The prelude to this smooth scene--mark well!--were the shocks
whereof the times gave token
Vaguely to us ere last year's snows shut over Lithuanian pine
and pool,
Which we told at the fall of the faded leaf, when the pride of
Prussia was bruised and broken,
And the Man of Adventure sat in the seat of the Man of Method
and rigid Rule.

SEMICHORUS I OF THE PITIES

Snows incarnadined were thine, O Eylau, field of the wide white
spaces,
And frozen lakes, and frozen limbs, and blood iced hard as it left
the veins:
Steel-cased squadrons swathed in cloud-drift, plunging to doom
through pathless places,
And forty thousand dead and near dead, strewing the early-lighted
plains.
Friedland to these adds its tale of victims, its midnight marches
and hot collisions,
Its plunge, at his word, on the enemy hooped by the bended river
and famed Mill stream,
As he shatters the moves of the loose-knit nations to curb his