THE SAME. AT THE THONBERG WINDMILL [By the newly lighted fire NAPOLÉON is seen walking up and down, much agitated and worn. With him are MURAT, BERTHIER, AUGEREAU, VICTOR, and other marshals of corps that have been engaged in this part of the field—all perspiring, muddy, and fatigued.]

NAPOLÉON Baseness so gross I had not guessed of them!— The thirty thousand false Bavarians I looked on losing not unplacidly; But these troth-swearing sober Saxonry I reckoned staunch by virtue of their king! Thirty-five thousand and gone! It magnifies A failure into a catastrophe.... Murat, we must retreat precipitately, And not as hope had dreamed! Begin it then This very hour.—Berthier, write out the orders.— Let me sit down. [A chair is brought out from the mill. NAPOLÉON 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. NAPOLÉON 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. NAPOLÉON 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.]

NAPOLÉON 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 NAPOLÉON 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, NAPOLÉON 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 Napoléon 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.]