Should the corvette return With the anxious Scotch colonel, Escape would be frustrate, Retention eternal. Four aching hours are spent thus. NAPOLEON remains silent on the deck, looking at the town lights, whose reflections bore like augers into the water of the bay. The sails hang flaccidly. Then a feeble breeze, then a strong south wind, begins to belly the sails; and the vessels move. CHORUS OF RUMOURS The south wind, the south wind, The south wind will save him, Embaying the frigate Whose speed would enslave him; Restoring the Empire That fortune once gave him! The moon rises and the ships silently disappear over the horizon as it mounts higher into the sky. SCENE II VIENNA. THE IMPERIAL PALACE [The fore-part of the scene is the interior of a dimly lit gallery with an openwork screen or grille on one side of it that commands a bird's-eye view of the grand saloon below. At present the screen is curtained. Sounds of music and applause in the saloon ascend into the gallery, and an irradiation from the same quarter shines up through chinks in the curtains of the grille. Enter the gallery MARIE LOUISE and the COUNTESS OF BRIGNOLE, followed by the COUNT NEIPPERG, a handsome man of forty two with a bandage over one eye.] COUNTESS OF BRIGNOLE Listen, your Majesty. You gather all As well as if you moved amid them there, And are advantaged with free scope to flit The moment the scene palls. MARIE LOUISE Ah, my dear friend, To put it so is flower-sweet of you; But a fallen Empress, doomed to furtive peeps At scenes her open presence would unhinge, Reads not much interest in them! Yet, in truth, 'Twas gracious of my father to arrange This glimpse-hole for my curiosity. --But I must write a letter ere I look; You can amuse yourself with watching them.-- Count, bring me pen and paper. I am told Madame de Montesquiou has been distressed By some alarm; I write to ask its shape. [NEIPPERG spreads writing materials on a table, and MARIE LOUISE sits. While she writes he stays near her. MADAME DE BRIGNOLE goes to the screen and parts the curtains. The light of a thousand candles blazes up into her eyes from below. The great hall is decorated in white and silver, enriched by evergreens and flowers. At the end a stage is arranged, and Tableaux Vivants are in progress thereon, representing the history of the House of Austria, in which figure the most charming women of the Court.