SCENE—_A pavilion in the garden which serves as a classroom
for the young princes. At left an open door through which
the garden can be seen, brilliant with sunlight. At right a
glass door which leads into the other rooms. It is a summer
afternoon. When the curtain rises DR. AGI is lecturing to GEORG
and ARSEN at a table. The boys are listening attentively._
AGI— ... After a series of humiliations and protracted physical
sufferings he died on the island of St. Helena, on the fifth day of May,
1821, at the age of fifty-two. He was buried on a promontory of the
island on which, in his lifetime, he had loved to sit and contemplate
the sea. His faithful attendants wished to inscribe the word “NAPOLEON”
on his grave-stone.... But his tormentor, Hudson Lowe, persecuting him
even beyond the grave, forbade it. The contemptible Hudson Lowe permitted
them to inscribe only the words, “LE GENERAL BUONAPARTE.” Later the body
was conveyed to France in solemn state; and Paris honored the martyred
emperor with magnificent funeral services. There, to this day, in the
Dom des Invalides, raised high on a majestically simple bier of stone,
he lies at rest. [_He has concluded the lecture. The boys are silent,
impressed. AGI looks at his watch._] That finishes our lesson for to-day.
[_Closes the book._] Have your highnesses any questions to ask?
ARSEN—Last night we had a dispute with mother. She hates Napoleon. She
said he was a usurper.
AGI—That’s one point of view.
GEORG—How do you mean?
AGI—Your highnesses are free to form your own opinions. For my part, I
consider him a genius who made his power felt throughout the world.
GEORG—Is that your point of view?
AGI—Yes.
GEORG—Then it’s mine too.
ARSEN—That’s what I call an independent opinion.
GEORG—So it is.... Not mine, but the professor’s.
ARSEN—Mother was very angry.
AGI—With Napoleon.
GEORG—And with you.
AGI—What for?
GEORG—For not teaching us to hate Napoleon.
AGI—I present his story without bias of any sort.
ARSEN—We told mother that, but she thinks you ought to teach us to hate
him.
GEORG—She says Napoleon is largely to blame for the dethronement of our
family.
AGI—With all deference to her royal highness, that is a somewhat
exaggerated view of the historical facts. Napoleon himself never altered
in the political status of your illustrious family. If anyone can be
blamed for it, it was the King of Württemberg.
GEORG—But the King of Württemberg was one of Napoleon’s puppets.
AGI—Well, indirectly, there may be something in it. That is why I used
the term exaggerated. And yet, if anyone can profit by a study of the
courage, the initiative and the luck of Napoleon, certainly, in my
opinion, a dethroned sovereign family can. Doesn’t his career teach us
that thrones are not unattainable? He was only an obscure attorney’s son.
Now what he could attain, surely someone, who by right of birth——