ields them. O my husband long,
Will you not purge your soul to value best
That high heredity from brain to brain
Which supersedes mere sequence of blood,
That often vary more from sire to son
Than between furthest strangers!...
Napoleon's offspring in his like must lie;
The second of his line be he who shows
Napoleon's soul in later bodiment,
The household father happening as he may!

NAPOLEON [smilingly wiping her eyes]

Little guessed I my dear would prove her rammed
With such a charge of apt philosophy
When tutoring me gay arts in earlier times!
She who at home coquetted through the years
In which I vainly penned her wishful words
To come and comfort me in Italy,
Might, faith, have urged it then effectually!
But never would you stir from Paris joys, [With some bitterness.]
And so, when arguments like this could move me,
I heard them not; and get them only now
When their weight dully falls. But I have said
'Tis not for me, but France--Good-bye an hour. [Kissing her.]
I must dictate some letters. This new move
Of England on Madrid may mean some trouble.
Come, dwell not gloomily on this cold need
Of waiving private joy for policy.
We are but thistle-globes on Heaven's high gales,
And whither blown, or when, or how, or why,
Can choose us not at all!...
I'll come to you anon, dear: staunch Roustan
Will light me in.

[Exit NAPOLEON. The scene shuts in shadow.]

SCENE VII

VIMIERO

[A village among the hills of Portugal, about fifty miles north
of Lisbon. Around it are disclosed, as ten on Sunday morning
strikes, a blue army of fourteen thousand men in isolated columns,
and red army of eighteen thousand in line formation, drawn up in
order of battle. The blue army is a French one under JUNOT; the
other an English one under SIR ARTHUR WELLESLEY--portion of that
recently landed.

The August sun glares on the shaven faces, white gaiters, and
white cross-belts of the English, who are to fight for their
lives while sweating under a quarter-hundredweight in knapsack
and pouches, and with firelocks heavy as putlogs. They occupy
a group of heights, but their position is one of great danger,
the land abruptly terminating two miles behind their backs in
lofty cliffs overhanging the Atlantic. The French occupy the
valleys in the English front, and this distinction between