THE DYNASTS ACT vi
NAPOLEON
Leave them alone! Nor stick nor stone we'll stir To interrupt them. Nought that we can scheme Will help us like their own stark sightlessness !— Let them get down to those white lowlands there, And so far plunge in the level that no skill, When sudden vision flashes on their fault, Can help them, though despair-stung, to regain The key to mastery held at yestereve!
Meantime move onward these divisions here Under the fog's kind shroud ; descend the slope, And cross the stream below the Russian lines : There halt concealed, till I waft down the word.
NAPOLEON and his staff retire to the hill south-east of Bellowitx as the day dawns pallidly.
'Tis good to get above that rimy cloak
And into cleaner air. It chilled me through.
When they reach the summit they are over the fog: and suddenly the sun breaks forth radiantly to the left of the Pratzen upland, illuminating the ash-hued face of NAPOLEON and the faces of those around him. All eyes are turned first to the sun, and thence to look for the dense masses of men that had occupied the upland the night before.
MURAT
I see them not. The plateau seems deserted !
NAPOLEON (exultantly)
Gone; verily!—Ah, how much will you bid, An hour hence, for the coign abandoned now! The battle's ours.—It was, then, their rash march Downwards to Tilnitz and the Goldbach swamps Before dawn, that we heard.—No hurry, Lannes ! Enjoy this sun, that rests its chubby jowl Upon the plain, and thrusts its bristling beard Across the lowlands* fleecy counterpane, Peering beneath our broadest hat-brims5 shade. . boult, how long hence to win the Pratzen top ?
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