And the road from here to Marsh Gate is impassable. Some ladies have been sitting in their coaches for hours outside the hedge there. We shall not get home till noon to-morrow. A VOICE [from the back] Take care of your watches! Pickpockets! FIRST ATTACHE Good. That relieves the monotony a little. [Excitement in the throng. When it has subsided the band strikes up a country dance, and stewards with white ribbons and laurel leaves are seen bustling about.] SECOND ATTACHE Let us go and look at the dancing. It is “Voulez-vous danser”--no, it is not,--it is “Enrico”--two ladies between two gentlemen. [They go from the alcove.] SPIRIT OF THE YEARS From this phantasmagoria let us roam To the chief wheel and capstan of the show, Distant afar. I pray you closely read What I reveal--wherein each feature bulks In measure with its value humanly. [The beholder finds himself, as it were, caught up on high, and while the Vauxhall scene still dimly twinkles below, he gazes southward towards Central Europe--the contorted and attenuated ecorche of the Continent appearing as in an earlier scene, but now obscure under the summer stars.] Three cities loom out large: Vienna there, Dresden, which holds Napoleon, over here, And Leipzig, whither we shall shortly wing, Out yonderwards. 'Twixt Dresden and Vienna What thing do you discern? SPIRIT OF THE PITIES Something broad-faced, Flat-folded, parchment-pale, and in its shape Rectangular; but moving like a cloud The Dresden way. SPIRIT OF THE YEARS Yet gaze more closely on it. SPIRIT OF THE PITIES The object takes a letter's lineaments Though swollen to mainsail measure,--magically, I gather from your words; and on its face Are three vast seals, red--signifying blood Must I suppose? It moves on Dresden town, And dwarfs the city as it passes by.-- You say Napoleon's there? SPIRIT OF THE YEARS The document, Sized to its big importance, as I told, Bears in it formal declaration, signed, Of war by Francis with his late-linked son, The Emperor of France. Now let us go To Leipzig city, and await the blow. [A chaotic gloom ensues, accompanied by a rushing like that of a mighty wind.] ACT THIRD SCENE I LEIPZIG. NAPOLEON'S QUARTERS IN THE REUDNITZ SUBURB [The sitting-room of a private mansion. Evening. A large stove- fire and candles burning. The October wind is heard without, and the leaded panes of the old windows shake mournfully.] SEMICHORUS I OF IRONIC SPIRITS [aerial music]