, and officials.]

CHORUS OF IRONIC SPIRITS [aerial music]

The Will Itself is slave to him,
And holds it blissful to obey!--
He said, "Go to; it is my whim

"To bed a bride without delay,
Who shall unite my dull new name
With one that shone in Caesar's day.

"She must conceive--you hear my claim?--
And bear a son--no daughter, mind--
Who shall hand on my form and fame

"To future times as I have designed;
And at the birth throughout the land
Must cannon roar and alp-horns wind!"

The Will grew conscious at command,
And ordered issue as he planned.

[The interior of the Palace is veiled.]

SCENE IV

SPAIN. ALBUERA

[The dawn of a mid-May day in the same spring shows the village
of Albuera with the country around it, as viewed from the summit
of a line of hills on which the English and their allies are ranged
under Beresford. The landscape swept by the eye includes to the
right foreground a hill loftier than any, and somewhat detached
from the range. The green slopes behind and around this hill are
untrodden--though in a few hours to be the sanguinary scene of the
most murderous struggle of the whole war.

The village itself lies to the left foreground, with its stream
flowing behind it in the distance on the right. A creeping brook
at the bottom of the heights held by the English joins the stream
by the village. Behind the stream some of the French forces are
visible. Away behind these stretches a great wood several miles
in area, out of which the Albuera stream emerges, and behind the
furthest verge of the wood the morning sky lightens momently. The
birds in the wood, unaware that this day is to be different from
every other day they have known there, are heard singing their
overtures with their usual serenity.]

DUMB SHOW

As objects grow more distinct it can be perceived that some strategic
dispositions of the night are being completed by the French forces,
which the evening before lay in the woodland to the front of the
English army. They have emerged during the darkness, and large
sections of them--infantry, cuirassiers, and artillery--have crept
round to BERESFORD'S right without his suspecting the movement, where
they lie hidden by the great hill aforesaid, though not more than
half