Such plans are--paper! Only to-morrow's light Reveals the true manoeuvre to my sight! [He flaps out with his hand all the candles but one or two, slowly walks outside the house, and listens. On the high ground in the direction of the French lines are heard shouts, and a wide illumination grows and strengthens; but the hollows are still mantled in fog.] Are these the signs of regiments out of heart, And beating backward from an enemy! [He remains pondering. On the Pratzen heights immediately in front there begins a movement among the Russians, signifying that the plan which involves desertion of that vantage-ground is about to be put in force. Noises of drunken singing arise from the Russian lines at various points elsewhere. The night shades involve the whole.] SCENE III THE SAME. THE FRENCH POSITION [Shortly before dawn on the morning of the 2nd of December. A white frost and fog still prevail in the low-lying areas; but overhead the sky is clear. A dead silence reigns. NAPOLEON, on a grey horse, closely attended by BERTHIER, and surrounded by MARSHALS SOULT, LANNES, MURAT, and their aides-de camp, all cloaked, is discernible in the gloom riding down from the high ground before Bellowitz, on which they have bivouacked, to the village of Puntowitz on the Goldbach stream, quite near the front of the Russian position of the day before on the Pratzen crest. The Emperor and his companions come to a pause, look around and upward to the hills, and listen.] NAPOLEON Their bivouac fires, that lit the top last night, Are all extinct. LANNES And hark you, Sire; I catch A sound which, if I err not, means the thing We have hoped, and hoping, feared fate would not yield! NAPOLEON My God, it surely is the tramp of horse And jolt of cannon downward from the hill Toward our right here, by the swampy lakes That face Davout? Thus, as I sketched, they work! MURAT Yes! They already move upon Tilnitz. NAPOLEON Leave them alone! Nor stick nor stone we'll stir To interrupt them. Nought that we can scheme Will help us like their own stark sightlessness!-- Let them get down to those white lowlands there, And so far plunge in the level that no skill, When sudden vision flashes on their fault, Can help them, though despair-stung, to regain The key to mastery held at yestereve! Meantime move onward these divisions here Under the fog's kind shroud; descend the slope, And cross the stream below the Russian lines: There halt concealed, till I send down the word. [NAPOLEON and his staff retire to the hill south-east of Bellowitz and the day dawns pallidly.] 'Tis good to get above that rimy cloak And into cleaner air. It chilled me through.