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Full text of "The Dynasts : Parts First And Second"

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PART SECOND              .    .   •
I make no doubt, ot ill and good report,            ••. , -
That marked our absence from the capital ?
BERTHIER
MethiakSj your Majesty, the enormous tale Of your campaign, like Aaron's serpent-rod, Has swallowed up the smaller of its kind. Some speak, 'tis true, in counterpoise thereto, Of English deeds by Talavera town, Though blurred by their exploit at Walcheren, And all its crazy, crass futilities,
NAPOLEON
Yet was the exploit well featured in design, Large in idea, and imaginative ; I had not deemed the blinkered English folk So capable of view*    Their fate contrived .'    To place an idiot at the helm of it,
Who marred its working, else it had been hard If things had not gone seriously for us. —But see, a lady saunters hitherward Whose gait proclaims her Madame Metternich, Gae that I fain would speak with.
NAPOLEON rises and crosses the room towards a lady-masker who has just appeared in the opening, BERTHIER draws off, and the EMPEEOE, unceremoniously taking the kd/sarm, hrings her forward
to m chair, and sits down beside 'her a$ dancing is resumed.
MADAME METTERNICH
In a flash
I recognized you, sire ; as who would not The bearer of such deep-delved charactery ?
The devil, madame, take your piercing eyes ! It's hard I cannot prosper in a game That every coxcomb plays successfully,