wit wanes,
And all are going--Prince Talleyrand,
The Emperor Alexander, Metternich,
The Emperor Francis.... So much for the Congress!
Only a few blank nobodies remain,
And they seem terror-stricken.... Blackly ends
Such fair festivities. The red god War
Stalks Europe's plains anew!

[The curtain of the grille is dropped. MESDAMES DE MONTESQUIOU
and DE BRIGNOLE leave the gallery. The light is extinguished
there and the scene disappears.]

SCENE III

LA MURE, NEAR GRENOBLE

[A lonely road between a lake and some hills, two or three miles
outside the village of la Mure, is discovered. A battalion of
the Fifth French royalist regiment of the line under COMMANDANT
LESSARD, is drawn up in the middle of the road with a company of
sappers and miners, comprising altogether about eight hundred men.

Enter to them from the south a small detachment of lancers with
an aide-de-camp at their head. They ride up to within speaking
distance.]

LESSARD

They are from Bonaparte. Present your arms!

AIDE [calling]

We'd parley on Napoleon's behalf,
And fain would ask you join him.

LESSARD

Al parole
With rebel bands the Government forbids.
Come five steps further and we fire!

AIDE

To France,
And to posterity through fineless time,
Must you then answer for so foul a blow
Against the common weal!

[NAPOLEON'S aide-de-camp and the lancers turn about and ride
back out of sight. The royalist troops wait. Presently there
reappears from the same direction a small column of soldiery,
representing the whole of NAPOLEON'S little army shipped from
Elba. It is divided into an advance-guard under COLONEL MALLET,
and two bodies behind, a troop of Polish lancers under COLONEL
JERMANWSKI on the right side of the road, and some officers
without troops on the left, under MAJOR PACCONI.

NAPOLEON rides in the midst of the advance-guard, in the old
familiar "redingote grise," cocked hat, and tricolor cockade,
his well-known profile keen against the hills. He is attended
by GENERALS BERTRAND, DROUOT, and CAMBRONNE. When they get within
gun-shot of the royalists the men are halted. NAPOLEON dismounts
and steps forward.]

NAPOLEON

Direct the men
To lodge their weapons underneath the arm,
Points downward. I shall not req