vi PART SECOND
JOSEPHINE
No, no;
It's Alexander's sister, I'm full sure!— By why this craze for home-made manikins And lineage mere of flesh ? You have said yourself It mattered not. Great Caesar, you declared, Sank sonless to his rest; was greater deemed Even for the isolation. Frederick Saw, too, no heir. It is the fate of such, Often, to be denied the common hope As fine for fulness in the rarer gifts That Nature yields them. O my husband long, Will you not purge your soul to value best That high heredity from brain to brain Which supersedes mere sequences of blood, That often vary more from sire to son Than between furthest strangers! . . . Napoleon's offspring in his like must lie; The second of his line be he who shows Napoleon's soul in later bodiment, The household father happening as he may!
NAPOLEON (smilingly wiping her eyes)
Little guessed I my dear would prove her rammed With such a charge of apt philosophy When tutoring me gay arts in earlier times! She who at home coquetted through the years In which I vainly penned her wishful words To come and comfort me in Italy, Might, faith, have urged it then effectually! But never would you stir from Paris joys,
(With some bitterness).
And so, when arguments like this could move me, I heard them not; and get them only now When their weight dully falls. But I have said 'Tis not for me, but France—Good-bye an hour.
(Kissing her.) 255