LIEUTENANT (taking it and holding it). All right: I'll be as gentle as
a lamb with him. His sister's a very pretty woman. (He attempts to kiss
her.)
LADY (slipping away from him). Oh, Lieutenant! You forget: your career
is at stake--the destiny of Europe--of humanity.
LIEUTENANT. Oh, bother the destiny of humanity (Making for her.) Only a
kiss.
LADY (retreating round the table). Not until you have regained your
honor as an officer. Remember: you have not captured my brother yet.
LIEUTENANT (seductively). You'll tell me where he is, won't you?
LADY. I have only to send him a certain signal; and he will be here in
quarter of an hour.
LIEUTENANT. He's not far off, then.
LADY. No: quite close. Wait here for him: when he gets my message he
will come here at once and surrender himself to you. You understand?
LIEUTENANT (intellectually overtaxed). Well, it's a little complicated;
but I daresay it will be all right.
LADY. And now, whilst you're waiting, don't you think you had better
make terms with the General?
LIEUTENANT. Oh, look here, this is getting frightfully complicated.
What terms?
LADY. Make him promise that if you catch my brother he will consider
that you have cleared your character as a soldier. He will promise
anything you ask on that condition.
LIEUTENANT. That's not a bad idea. Thank you: I think I'll try it.
LADY. Do. And mind, above all things, don't let him see how clever you
are.
LIEUTENANT. I understand. He'd be jealous.
LADY. Don't tell him anything except that you are resolved to capture
my brother or perish in the attempt. He won't believe you. Then you
will produce my brother--
LIEUTENANT (interrupting as he masters the plot). And have the laugh at
him! I say: what a clever little woman you are! (Shouting.) Giuseppe!
LADY. Sh! Not a word to Giuseppe about me. (She puts her finger on her
lips. He does the same. They look at one another warningly. Then, with
a ravishing smile, she changes the gesture into wafting him a kiss, and
runs out through the inner door. Electrified, he bursts into a volley
of chuckles. Giuseppe comes back by the outer door.)
GIUSEPPE. The horse is ready, Lieutenant.
LIEUTENANT. I'm not going just yet. Go and find the General, and tell
him I want to speak to him.
GIUSEPPE (shaking his head). That will never do, Lieutenant.
LIEUTENANT. Why not?
GIUSEPPE. In this wicked world a general may send for a lieutenant; but
a lieutenant must not send for a general.
LIEUTENANT. Oh, you think he wouldn't like it. Well, perhaps you're
right: one has to be awfully particular about that sort of thing now
we've got a republic.
Napoleon reappears, advancing from the vineyard, buttoning the breast
of his coat, pale and full of gnawing thoughts.
GIUSEPPE (unconscious of Napoleon's approach). Quite true, Lieutenant,
quite true. You are all like innkeepers now in France: you have to be
polite to everybody.
NAPOLEON (putting his hand on Giuseppe's shoulder). And that destroys
the whole value of politeness, eh?
LIEUTENANT. The very man I wanted! See here, General: suppose I catch
that fellow for you!
NAPOLEON (with ironical gravity). You will not catch him, my friend.
LIEUTENANT. Aha! you think so; but you'll see. Just wait. Only, if I do
catch him and hand him over to you, will you cry quits? Will you drop
all this about degrading me in the presence of my regiment? Not that I
mind, you know; but still no regiment likes to have all the other
regiments laughing at it.
NAPOLEON. (a cold ray of humor striking pallidly across his gloom).
What shall we do with this officer, Giuseppe? Everything he says is
wrong.
GIUSEPPE (promptly). Make him a general, excellency; and then
everything he says will be right.
LIEUTENANT (crowing). Haw-aw! (He throws himself ecstatically on the
couch to enjoy the joke.)
NAPOLEON (laughing and pinching Giuseppe's ear). You are thrown away in
this inn, Giuseppe. (He sits down and places Giuseppe before him like a
schoolmaster with a pupil.) Shall I take you away with me and make a
man of you?
GIUSEPPE (shaking his head rapidly and repeatedly). No, thank you,
General. All my life long people have wanted to make a man of me. When
I was a boy, our good priest wanted to make a man of me by teaching me
to read and write. Then the organist at Melegnano wanted to make a man
of me by teaching me to read music. The recruiting sergeant would have
made a man of me if I had been a few inches taller. But it always meant
making me work; and I am too lazy for that, thank Heaven! So I taught
myself to cook and became an innkeeper; and now I keep servants to do
the work, and have nothing to do myself except talk, which suits me
perfectly.
NAPOLEON (looking at him thoughtfully). You are satisfied?
GIUSEPPE (with cheerful conviction). Quite, excellency.
NAPOLEON. And you have no devouring devil inside you who must be fed
with action and victory--gorged with them night and day--who makes you
pay, with the sweat of your brain and body, weeks of Herculean toil for
ten minutes of enjoyment--who is at once your slave and your tyrant,
your genius and your doom--who brings you a crown in one hand and the
oar of a galley slave in the other--who shows you all the kingdoms of
the earth and offers to make you their master on condition that you
become their servant!--have you nothing of that in you?
GIUSEPPE. Nothing of it! Oh, I assure you, excellency, MY devouring
devil is far worse than that. He offers me no crowns and kingdoms: he
expects to get everything for nothing--sausages, omelettes, grapes,
cheese, polenta, wine--three times a day, excellency: nothing less will
content him.
LIEUTENANT. Come, drop it, Giuseppe: you're making me feel hungry again.
(Giuseppe, with an apologetic shrug, retires from the conversation, and
busies himself at the table, dusting it, setting the map straight, and
replacing Napoleon's chair, which the lady has pushed back.)
NAPOLEON (turning to the lieutenant with sardonic ceremony). I hope _I_
have not been making you feel ambitious.
LIEUTENANT. Not at all: I don't fly so high. Besides: I'm better as I
am: men like me are wanted in the army just now. The fact is, the
Revolution was all very well for civilians; but it won't work in the
army. You know what soldiers are, General: they WILL have men of family
for their officers. A subaltern must be a gentleman, because he's so
much in contact with the men. But a general, or even a colonel, may be
any sort of riff-raff if he understands the shop well enough. A
lieutenant is a gentleman: all the rest is chance. Why, who do you
suppose won the battle of Lodi? I'll tell you. My horse did.
NAPOLEON (rising) Your folly is carrying you too far, sir. Take care.
LIEUTENANT. Not a bit of it. You remember all that red-hot cannonade
across the river: the Austrians blazing away at you to keep you from
crossing, and you blazing away at them to keep them from setting the
bridge on fire? Did you notice where I was then?
NAPOLEON (with menacing politeness). I am sorry. I am afraid I was
rather occupied at the moment.
GIUSEPPE (with eager admiration). They say you jumped off your horse
and worked the big guns with your own hands, General.
LIEUTENANT. That was a mistake: an officer should never let himself
down to the level of his men. (Napoleon looks at him dangerously, and
begins to walk tigerishly to and fro.) But you might have been firing
away at the Austrians still, if we cavalry fellows hadn't found the
ford and got across and turned old Beaulieu's flank for you. You know
you daren't have given the order to charge the bridge if you hadn't
seen us on the other side. Consequently, I say that whoever found that
ford won the battle of Lodi. Well, who found it? I was the first man to
cross: and I know. It was my horse that found it. (With conviction, as
he rises from the couch.) That horse is the true conqueror of the
Austrians.
NAPOLEON (passionately). You idiot: I'll have you shot for losing those
despatches: I'll have you blown from the mouth of a cannon: nothing
less could make any impression on you. (Baying at him.) Do you hear? Do
you understand?
A French officer enters unobserved, carrying his sheathed sabre in his
hand.
LIEUTENANT (unabashed). IF I don't capture him, General. Remember the
if.
NAPOLEON. If! If!! Ass: there is no such man.
THE OFFICER (suddenly stepping between them and speaking in the
unmistakable voice of the Strange Lady). Lieutenant: I am your
prisoner. (She offers him her sabre. They are amazed. Napoleon gazes at
her for a moment thunderstruck; then seizes her by the wrist and drags
her roughly to him, looking closely and fiercely at her to satisfy
himself as to her identity; for it now begins to darken rapidly into
night, the red glow over the vineyard giving way to clear starlight.)
NAPOLEON. Pah! (He flings her hand away with an exclamation of disgust,
and turns his back on her with his hand in his breast and his brow
lowering.)
LIEUTENANT (triumphantly, taking the sabre). No such man: eh, General?
(To the Lady.) I say: where's my horse?
LADY. Safe at Borghetto, waiting for you, Lieutenant.
NAPOLEON (turning on them). Where are the despatches?
LADY. You would never guess. They are in the most unlikely place in the
world. Did you meet my sister here, any of you?
LIEUTENANT. Yes. Very nice woman. She's wonderfully like you; but of
course she's better looking.
LADY (mysteriously). Well, do you know that she is a witch?
GIUSEPPE (running down to them in terror, crossing himself). Oh, no,
no, no. It is not safe to jest about such things. I cannot have it in
my house, excellency.
LIEUTENANT. Yes, drop it. You're my prisoner, you know. Of course I
don't believe in any such rubbish; but still it's not a proper subject
for joking.
LADY. But this is very serious. My sister has bewitched the General.
(Giuseppe and the Lieutenant recoil from Napoleon.) General: open your
coat: you will find the despatches in the breast of it. (She puts her
hand quickly on his breast.) Yes: there they are: I can feel them. Eh?
(She looks up into his face half coaxingly, half mockingly.) Will you
allow me, General? (She takes a button as if to unbutton his coat, and
pauses for permission.)
NAPOLEON (inscrutably). If you dare.
LADY. Thank you. (She opens his coat and takes out the despatches.)
There! (To Giuseppe, showing him the despatches.) See!
GIUSEPPE (flying to the outer door). No, in heaven's name! They're
bewitched.
LADY (turning to the Lieutenant). Here, Lieutenant: YOU'RE not afraid
of them.
LIEUTENANT (retreating). Keep off. (Seizing the hilt of the sabre.)
Keep off, I tell you.
LADY (to Napoleon). They belong to you, General. Take them.
GIUSEPPE. Don't touch them, excellency. Have nothing to do with them.
LIEUTENANT. Be careful, General: be careful.
GIUSEPPE. Burn them. And burn the witch, too.
LADY (to Napoleon). Shall I burn them?
NAPOLEON (thoughtfully). Yes, burn them. Giuseppe: go and fetch a light.
GIUSEPPE (trembling and stammering). Do you mean go alone--in the
dark--with a witch in the house?
NAPOLEON. Psha! You're a poltroon. (To the Lieutenant.) Oblige me by
going, Lieutenant.
LIEUTENANT (remonstrating). Oh, I say, General! No, look here, you
know: nobody can say I'm a coward after Lodi. But to ask me to go into
the dark by myself without a candle after such an awful conversation is
a little too much. How would you like to do it yourself?
NAPOLEON (irritably). You refuse to obey my order?
LIEUTENANT (resolutely). Yes, I do. It's not reasonable. But I'll tell
you what I'll do. If Giuseppe goes, I'll go with him and protect him.
NAPOLEON (to Giuseppe). There! will that satisfy you? Be off, both of
you.
GIUSEPPE (humbly, his lips trembling). W--willingly, your excellency.
(He goes reluctantly towards the inner door.) Heaven protect me! (To
the lieutenant.) After you, Lieutenant.
LIEUTENANT. You'd better go first: I don't know the way.
GIUSEPPE. You can't miss it. Besides (imploringly, laying his hand on
his sleeve), I am only a poor innkeeper; and you are a man of family.
LIEUTENANT. There's something in that. Here: you needn't be in such a
fright. Take my arm. (Giuseppe does so.) That's the way.(They go out,
arm in arm. It is now starry night. The lady throws the packet on the
table and seats herself at her ease on the couch enjoying the sensation
of freedom from petticoats.)
LADY. Well, General: I've beaten you.
NAPOLEON (walking about). You have been guilty of indelicacy--of
unwomanliness. Do you consider that costume a proper one to wear?
LADY. It seems to me much the same as yours.
NAPOLEON. Psha! I blush for you.
LADY (naively). Yes: soldiers blush so easily! (He growls and turns
away. She looks mischievously at him, balancing the despatches in her
hand.) Wouldn't you like to read these before they're burnt, General?
You must be dying with curiosity. Take a peep. (She throws the packet
on the table, and turns her face away from it.) I won't look.
NAPOLEON. I have no curiosity whatever, madame. But since you are
evidently burning to read them, I give you leave to do so.
LADY. Oh, I've read them already.
NAPOLEON (starting). What!
LADY. I read them the first thing after I rode away on that poor
lieutenant's horse. So you see I know what's in them; and you don't.
NAPOLEON. Excuse me: I read them there in the vineyard ten minutes ago.
LADY. Oh! (Jumping up.) Oh, General I've not beaten you. I do admire
you so. (He laughs and pats her cheek.) This time really and truly
without shamming, I do you homage (kissing his hand).
NAPOLEON (quickly withdrawing it). Brr! Don't do that. No more
witchcraft.
LADY. I want to say something to you--only you would misunderstand it.
NAPOLEON. Need that stop you?
LADY. Well, it is this. I adore a man who is not afraid to be mean and
selfish.
NAPOLEON (indignantly). I am neither mean nor selfish.
LADY. Oh, you don't appreciate yourself. Besides, I don't really mean
meanness and selfishness.
NAPOLEON. Thank you. I thought perhaps you did.
LADY. Well, of course I do. But what I mean is a certain strong
simplicity about you.
NAPOLEON. That's better.
LADY. You didn't want to read the letters; but you were curious about
what was in them. So you went into the garden and read them when no one
was looking, and then came back and pretended you hadn't. That's the
meanest thing I ever knew any man do; but it exactly fulfilled your
purpose; and so you weren't a bit afraid or ashamed to do it.
NAPOLEON (abruptly). Where did you pick up all these vulgar
scruples--this (with contemptuous emphasis) conscience of yours? I took
you for a lady--an aristocrat. Was your grandfather a shopkeeper, pray?
LADY. No: he was an Englishman.
NAPOLEON. That accounts for it. The English are a nation of
shopkeepers. Now I understand why you've beaten me.
LADY. Oh, I haven't beaten you. And I'm not English.
NAPOLEON. Yes, you are--English to the backbone. Listen to me: I will
explain the English to you.
LADY (eagerly). Do. (With a lively air of anticipating an intellectual
treat, she sits down on the couch and composes herself to listen to
him. Secure of his audience, he at once nerves himself for a
performance. He considers a little before he begins; so as to fix her
attention by a moment of suspense. His style is at first modelled on
Talma's in Corneille's "Cinna;" but it is somewhat lost in the
darkness, and Talma presently gives way to Napoleon, the voice coming
through the gloom with startling intensity.)
NAPOLEON. There are three sorts of people in the world, the low people,
the middle people, and the high people. The low people and the high
people are alike in one thing: they have no scruples, no morality. The
low are beneath morality, the high above it. I am not afraid of either
of them: for the low are unscrupulous without knowledge, so that they
make an idol of me; whilst the high are unscrupulous without purpose,
so that they go down before my will. Look you: I shall go over all the
mobs and all the courts of Europe as a plough goes over a field. It is
the middle people who are dangerous: they have both knowledge and
purpose. But they, too, have their weak point. They are full of
scruples--chained hand and foot by their morality and respectability.
LADY. Then you will beat the English; for all shopkeepers are middle
people.
NAPOLEON. No, because the English are a race apart. No Englishman is
too low to have scruples: no Englishman is high enough to be free from
their tyranny. But every Englishman is born with a certain miraculous
power that makes him master of the world. When he wants a thing, he
never tells himself that he wants it. He waits patiently until there
comes into his mind, no one knows how, a burning conviction that it is
his moral and religious duty to conquer those who have got the thing he
wants. Then he becomes irresistible. Like the aristocrat, he does what
pleases him and grabs what he wants: like the shopkeeper, he pursues
his purpose with the industry and steadfastness that come from strong
religious conviction and deep sense of moral responsibility. He is
never at a loss for an effective moral attitude. As the great champion
of freedom and national independence, he conquers and annexes half the
world, and calls it Colonization. When he wants a new market for his
adulterated Manchester goods, he sends a missionary to teach the
natives the gospel of peace. The natives kill the missionary: he flies
to arms in defence of Christianity; fights for it; conquers for it; and
takes the market as a reward from heaven. In defence of his island
shores, he puts a chaplain on board his ship; nails a flag with a cross
on it to his top-gallant mast; and sails to the ends of the earth,
sinking, burning and destroying all who dispute the empire of the seas
with him. He boasts that a slave is free the moment his foot touches
British soil; and he sells the children of his poor at six years of age
to work under the lash in his factories for sixteen hours a day. He
makes two revolutions, and then declares war on our one in the name of
law and order. There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not
find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the
wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic
principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on
imperial principles; he bullies you on manly principles; he supports
his king on loyal principles, and cuts off his king's head on
republican principles. His watchword is always duty; and he never
forgets that the nation which lets its duty get on the opposite side to
its interest is lost. He--
LADY. W-w-w-w-w-wh! Do stop a moment. I want to know how you make me
out to be English at this rate.
NAPOLEON (dropping his rhetorical style). It's plain enough. You wanted
some letters that belonged to me. You have spent the morning in
stealing them--yes, stealing them, by highway robbery. And you have
spent the afternoon in putting me in the wrong about them--in assuming
that it was I who wanted to steal YOUR letters--in explaining that it
all came about through my meanness and selfishness, and your goodness,
your devotion, your self-sacrifice. That's English.
LADY. Nonsense. I am sure I am not a bit English. The English are a
very stupid people.
NAPOLEON. Yes, too stupid sometimes to know when they're beaten. But I
grant that your brains are not English. You see, though your
grandfather was an Englishman, your grandmother was--what? A
Frenchwoman?
LADY. Oh, no. An Irishwoman.
NAPOLEON (quickly). Irish! (Thoughtfully.) Yes: I forgot the Irish. An
English army led by an Irish general: that might be a match for a
French army led by an Italian general. (He pauses, and adds, half
jestingly, half moodily) At all events, YOU have beaten me; and what
beats a man first will beat him last. (He goes meditatively into the
moonlit vineyard and looks up. She steals out after him. She ventures
to rest her hand on his shoulder, overcome by the beauty of the night
and emboldened by its obscurity.)
LADY (softly). What are you looking at?
NAPOLEON (pointing up). My star.
LADY. You believe in that?
NAPOLEON. I do. (They look at it for a moment, she leaning a little on
his shoulder.)
LADY. Do you know that the English say that a man's star is not
complete without a woman's garter?
NAPOLEON (scandalized--abruptly shaking her off and coming back into
the room). Pah! The hypocrites! If the French said that, how they would
hold up their hands in pious horror! (He goes to the inner door and
holds it open, shouting) Hallo! Giuseppe. Where's that light, man. (He
comes between the table and the sideboard, and moves the chair to the
table, beside his own.) We have still to burn the letter. (He takes up
the packet. Giuseppe comes back, pale and still trembling, carrying a
branched candlestick with a couple of candles alight, in one hand, and
a broad snuffers tray in the other.)
GIUSEPPE (piteously, as he places the light on the table). Excellency:
what were you looking up at just now--out there? (He points across his
shoulder to the vineyard, but is afraid to look round.)
NAPOLEON (unfolding the packet). What is that to you?
GIUSEPPE (stammering). Because the witch is gone--vanished; and no one
saw her go out.
LADY (coming behind him from the vineyard). We were watching her riding
up to the moon on your broomstick, Giuseppe. You will never see her
again.