ner]

The Generals slip away! I, Love, must take
The cobbled highway soon. Some hours ago
The French seized Charleroi; so they loom nigh.

PARTNER [uneasily]

Which tells me that the hour you draw your sword
Looms nigh us likewise!

YOUNG OFFICER

Some are saying here
We fight this very day. Rumours all-shaped
Fly round like cockchafers!

[Suddenly there echoes in the ballroom a long-drawn metallic purl
of sound, making all the company start.]

Transcriber's Note: There follows in musical notation five measures
for side-drum.

Ah--there it is,
Just as I thought! They are beating the Generale.

[The loud roll of side-drums is taken up by other drums further
and further away, till the hollow noise spreads all over the city.
Dismay is written on the faces of the women. The Highland non-
commissioned officers and privates march smartly down the ballroom
and disappear.]

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Discerned you stepping out in front of them
That figure--of a pale drum-major kind,
Or fugleman--who wore a cold grimace?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

He was my old fiend Death, in rarest trim,
The occasion favouring his husbandry!

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Are those who marched behind him, then, to fall?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Ay, all well-nigh, ere Time have houred three-score.

PARTNER

Surely this cruel call to instant war
Spares space for one dance more, that memory
May store when you are gone, while I--sad me!--
Wait, wait and weep.... Yes--one there is to be!

SPIRIT IRONIC

Methinks flirtation grows too tender here!

[Country Dance, "The Prime of Life," a favourite figure at this
period. The sense of looming tragedy carries emotion to its
climax. All the younger officers stand up with their partners,
forming several figures of fifteen or twenty couples each. The
air is ecstasizing, and both sexes abandon themselves to the
movement.

Nearly half an hour passes before the figure is danced down.
Smothered kisses follow the conclusion. The silence is broken
from without by more long hollow rolling notes, so near that
they thrill the window-panes.]

SEVERAL

'Tis the Assemble. Now, then, we must go!

[The officers bid farewell to their partners and begin leaving
in twos