GEREAU

There are reasons, sire,
Good reasons for despondence! As I came
I learnt, past question, that Bavaria
Swerves on the very pivot of desertion.
This adds some threescore thousand to our foes.

NAPOLEON [irritated]

That consummation long has threatened us!...
Would that you showed the steeled fidelity
You used to show! Except me, all are slack!
[To Murat] Why, even you yourself, my brother-in-law,
Have been inclining to abandon me!

MURAT [vehemently]

I, sire? It is not so. I stand and swear
The grievous imputation is untrue.
You should know better than believe these things,
And well remember I have enemies
Who ever wait to slander me to you!

NAPOLEON [more calmly]

Ah yes, yes. That is so.--And yet--and yet
You have deigned to weigh the feasibility
Of treating me as Austria has done!...
But I forgive you. You are a worthy man;
You feel real friendship for me. You are brave.
Yet I was wrong to make a king of you.
If I had been content to draw the line
At vice-king, as with young Eugene, no more,
As he has laboured you'd have laboured, too!
But as full monarch, you have foraged rather
For your own pot than mine!

[MURAT and the marshal are silent, and look at each other with
troubled countenances. NAPOLEON goes to the table at the back, and
bends over the charts with CAULAINCOURT, dictating desultory notes
to the secretaries.]

SPIRIT IRONIC

A seer might say
This savours of a sad Last-Supper talk
'Twixt his disciples and this Christ of war!

[Enter an attendant.]

ATTENDANT

The Saxon King and Queen and the Princess
Enter the city gates, your Majesty.
They seek the shelter of the civic walls
Against the risk of capture by Allies.

NAPOLEON

Ah, so? My friend Augustus, is he near?
I will be prompt to meet him when he comes,
And safely quarter him. [He returns to the map.]

[An interval. The clock strikes midnight. The EMPEROR rises
abruptly, sighs, and comes forward.]

I now retire,
Comrades. Good-night, good-night. Remember well
All must prepare to grip with gory death
In the now voidless battle. It will be
A great one and a critical; one, in brief,
That will seal France's fate, and yours, and mine!

ALL [fervidly]

We'll do our utmost, by the Holy Heaven!

NAPOLEON