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.

[When they reach the summit they are over the fog: and suddenly
the sun breaks forth to the left of Pratzen, illuminating the
ash-hued face of NAPOLEON and the faces of those around him.
All eyes are turned first to the sun, and thence to look for
the dense masses of men that had occupied the upland the night
before.]

MURAT

I see them