ur.--Berthier, write out the orders.--
Let me sit down.

[A chair is brought out from the mill. NAPOLEON sinks into it, and
BERTHIER, stooping over the fire, begins writing to the Emperor's
dictation, the marshals looking with gloomy faces at the flaming
logs.

NAPOLEON has hardly dictated a line when he stops short. BERTHIER
turns round and finds that he has dropt asleep.]

MURAT [sullenly]

Far better not disturb him;
He'll soon enough awake!

[They wait, muttering to one another in tones expressing weary
indifference to issues. NAPOLEON sleeps heavily for a quarter of
and hour, during which the moon rises over the field. At the end
he starts up stares around him with astonishment.]

NAPOLEON

Am I awake?
Or is this all a dream?--Ah, no. Too real!...
And yet I have seen ere now a time like this.

[The dictation is resumed. While it is in progress there can be
heard between the words of NAPOLEON the persistent cries from the
plain, rising and falling like those of a vast rookery far away,
intermingled with the trampling of hoofs and the rumble of wheels.
The bivouac fires of the engirdling enemy glow all around except
for a small segment to the west--the track of retreat, still kept
open by BERTRAND, and already taken by the baggage-waggons.

The orders for its adoption by the entire army being completed,
NAPOLEON bids adieu to his marshals, and rides with BERTHIER and
CAULAINCOURT into Leipzig. Exeunt also the others.]

SEMICHORUS I OF THE PITIES

Now, as in the dream of one sick to death,
There comes a narrowing room
That pens him, body and limbs and breath,
To wait a hideous doom,

SEMICHORUS II

So to Napoleon in the hush
That holds the town and towers
Through this dire night, a creeping crush
Seems inborne with the hours.

[The scene closes under a rimy mist, which makes a lurid cloud of
the firelights.]

SCENE V

THE SAME. A STREET NEAR THE RANSTADT GATE

[High old-fashioned houses form the street, along which, from the
east of the city, is streaming a confusion of waggons, in hurried
exit through the gate westward upon the highroad to Lindenau,
Lutzen, and the Rhine.

In front of an inn called the "Prussian Arms" are some attendants
of NAPOLEON wai