Prussia's a shuffler, England a self-seeker, Nobility has shone in you alone. Your error grew of over-generous dreams, And misbeliefs by dullard ministers. By treating personally we speed affairs More in an hour than they in blundering months. Between us two, henceforth, must stand no third. There's peril in it, while England's mean ambition Still works to get us skewered by the ears; And in this view your chiefs-of-staff concur. ALEXANDER The judgment of my officers I share. NAPOLEON To recapitulate. Nothing can greaten you Like this alliance. Providence has flung My good friend Sultan Selim from his throne, Leaving me free in dealings with the Porte; And I discern the hour as one to end A rule that Time no longer lets cohere. If I abstain, its spoils will go to swell The power of this same England, our annoy; That country which enchains the trade of towns With such bold reach as to monopolize, Among the rest, the whole of Petersburg's-- Ay!--through her purse, friend, as the lender there!-- Shutting that purse, she may incite to--what? Muscovy's fall, its ruler's murdering. Her fleet at any minute can encoop Yours in the Baltic; in the Black Sea, too; And keep you snug as minnows in a glass! Hence we, fast-fellowed by our mutual foes, Seaward the British, Germany by land, And having compassed, for our common good, The Turkish Empire's due partitioning, As comrades can conjunctly rule the world To its own gain and our eternal fame! ALEXANDER [stirred and flushed] I see vast prospects opened!--yet, in truth, Ere you, sire, broached these themes, their outlines loomed Not seldom in my own imaginings; But with less clear a vision than endows So great a captain, statesman, philosoph, As centre in yourself; whom had I known Sooner by some few years, months, even weeks, I had been spared full many a fault of rule. --Now as to Austria. Should we call her in? NAPOLEON Two in a bed I have slept, but never three. ALEXANDER Ha-ha! Delightful. And, then nextly, Spain? NAPOLEON I lighted on some letters at Berlin, Wherein King Carlos offered to attack me. A Bourbon, minded thus, so near as Spain, Is dangerous stuff. He must be seen to soon!... A draft, then, of our treaty being penned, We will peruse it later. If King George Will not, upon the terms there offered him, Conclude a ready peace, he can be forced. Trumpet yourself as France's firm ally, And Austria will fain to do the same: England, left nude to such joint harassment, Must shiver--fall. ALEXANDER [with naive enthusiasm] It is a great alliance! NAPOLEON Would it were one in blood as well as brain-- Of family hopes, and sweet domestic bliss! ALEXANDER Ah--is it to my sister you refer? NAPOLEON