THE DYNASTS ACT r
FOURTH LADY
All objects in the Palace—cared for, kept
Even as they were when our arch-monarch died—
The books, the chair, the inkhorn, and the pen
He quizzed with flippant curiosity ;
And entering where our hero's bones are urned
He seized the sword and standards treasured there,
And with a mixed effrontery and regard
Declared that Paris soon should see them all
As gifts to the H6tel des Invalides.
THIRD LADY Such rodomontade is cheap : what matters it!
A galaxy of marshals, forming Napoleon's staff, now enters the Platz immediately before the windows. In the midst rides the EMPEROR himself. The ladies are silent. The procession passes along the front until it reaches the entrance to the Royal Palace. At the door NAPOLEON descends from his horse and goes into the building amid the resonant trumpetings of his soldiers and the silence of the crowd-
SECOND LADY (impressed)
O why does such a man debase himself
By countenancing loud scurrility
Against a queen who cannot make reprise!
A power so ponderous needs no littleness— -
The last resort of feeble desperates !
Enter fifth lady.
FIFTH LADY (breathlessly)
Humiliation grows acuter still.
He placards rhetoric to his soldiery
On their distress of us and our allies,
Declaring he'll not stack away his arms
Till he has choked the remaining foes of France
In their own gainful glut.—Whom means he, think
you?
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