Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 290
The Secretary collapses. Napoleon stamps his foot. A terrible looking Turkish attendant, Marmalade the Mameluke, comes in and drags him out by the collar, and then drags in another secretary and props him up in a chair where he at once commences to write furiously.
Napoleon never stops dictating, —
“There are two more cannons in the garage of the Prefect of Police. One has a little piece knocked out of the breech—”
The Secretary (pausing in surprise): Mon Dieu!
The Emperor: Eh, what, mon enfant. What surprises you?
The Secretary: Ah, Sire, it is too wonderful. How can you tell that a piece is out of the breeches?
Napoleon (pinching his ear): Ha! You think me wonderful!
The Secretary: I do.
Napoleon (pulling his hair): I am. And my cannon! I know them all. That one with the piece knocked out of the breech shall I tell you how I know it?
The Secretary: Ah, Sire!
Marmalade, the Mameluke comes in and salaams to the ground.
The Emperor: Well, what is it? Vieux fromage de cuir!
The Mameluke gurgles about a pint of Turkish.
The Emperor: Ha! Bring her in (to the secretary). You may go. You, Marmalade, after she enters, stand behind that curtain, so, — your scimitar so, — if I stamp my left foot — you understand.
Marmalade (with a salaam): Zakouski, Anchovi.
Emperor: Good. Show her in.
There enters with a rush a beautiful half Polish Countess Skandaliska. She throws herself at the Emperor’s feet.
Sire, Sire, my husband! I crave his life.
Napoleon (taking her by the chin and speaking coldly): You are very beautiful.
Sire! My husband. I ask his life. He is under orders to be shot this morning.
The Emperor (coldly): Let me feel your ears.
Ah! Sire. In pity, I beg you for his life.
The Emperor (absently): You have nice fat arms. Let me pinch them.
Sire! My husband. . . .
The Emperor (suddenly changing his tone): Yes, your husband. Did you think I did not know. I have it here. (He turns his back on the Countess, picks up a document from the table and reads):
“Scratchitoff Skandaliska, Count of Poland, Baron of Lithuania, Colonel of the Fifth Lancers, reported by the Imperial police as in the pay of the Czar of Russia—” Ha! Did you think I did not know that? —
His back is still turned. The Countess is standing upright. Her face is as of stone. Slowly she draws from her bodice a long poniard, slowly she raises it above the Emperor’s back.
Napoleon goes on reading.
“ — conspired with seven others, since executed, to take the life of the Emperor, and now this 5th day of September . . .”
The Countess has raised the poniard to its height. As she is about to stab the Emperor, he taps slightly with his foot. Marmalade, the Mameluke, has flung aside the curtain and grasps the Countess from behind by both wrists. The poniard rattles to the floor. The Emperor turns and goes on calmly reading the document.
“This 5th day of September, pardoned by the clemency of the Emperor and restored to his estates.”
The Countess released by Marmalade, falls weeping at the Emperor’s feet.
Ah! Sire, you are indeed noble.
Napoleon: Am I not? Take her out, Marmalade. (The Mameluke bows, takes out the weeping Countess and returns with a renewed salaam):
The Emperor (dreamily): We know how to treat them, don’t we? old trognan de chou. Let no one disturb that mirror. It may serve us again. And now, bring me a secretary, and I will go on dictating.
In this way did the great Emperor transact more business in a week than most men would get through in a day.
But in this very same play of Des Deux Choses L’Une, we have to remember that while all these other things are happening Napoleon is also fighting a battle.
In fact hardly is the Countess Skandaliska well off the premises before a military aide-de-camp comes rattling into the room. The great Brain is in full operation again in a second.
Ha! Colonel Escargot. What news?
Bad news, Sire. Marshal Masséna reports the battle is lost.
The Emperor (frowning): Bad news. The battle lost? Do you not know, Colonel Escargot, that I do not permit a battle to be lost? How long have you been in my service? Let me see, you were at Austerlitz?
I was, Sire.
And you were afterwards in Cantonments at Strasburg?
It is true, Sire.
I saw you there for five minutes on the afternoon of the 3rd of November of 1810.
Sire! It is wonderful.
Tut, tut, it is nothing. You were playing dominoes. I remember you had just thrown a double three when I arrived.
Colonel Escargot (falling on his knees): Sire, it is too much. You are inspired.
The Emperor (smiling): Perhaps. But realize then, that I do not allow a battle to be lost. Get up, mon vieux bonnet de coton, let me pinch your ear. Now then, this battle, let us see. You, the secretary, give me a map.
The secretary unfolds a vast map on the table. The Emperor stands in deep thought regarding it. Presently he speaks:
Where is Masséna?
Colonel Escargot (indicating a spot): He is here, Sire.
What is his right resting on?
His right, Sire, is extended here. It is endangered. (The Emperor remains a moment in thought.)
How is his centre?
His centre is solid.
And where has he got his rear?
His rear, Sire, is resting on a thorn hedge.
The Emperor: Ha! Ride to Masséna at once. Tell him to haul in his centre and to stick out his rear. The battle will be won in two hours.
Escargot (saluting): Sire. It is wonderful. (He clatters out.)
Napoleon sinks wearily into a chair. His head droops in his hands. “Wonderful!” he broods, “and yet the one thing of all things that I want to do, I can’t do.”
Indeed the man is really up against it. He can remember cannons and win battles and tell Masséna where to put his rear, but when it comes to Josephine, he is no better than the rest of us.
The Emperor rings the bell.
The secretary comes in.
Listen, I have taken a decision. I am going to divorce Josephine.
The secretary bows.
Go to her at once and tell her that she is divorced.
The secretary bows again.
If she asks why, say that it is the Emperor’s command. You understand.
I do.
If she tries to come here, do not permit it. Stop her, if need be with your own hands. Tell Marmalade she is not to pass. Tell him to choke her. Tell the guard outside to stop her. Tell them to fire a volley at her. Do you understand? She is not to come.
Alas, Sire, it is too late. She is here now. I hear her voice.
One can hear outside the protests of the guards.
The Empress Josephine, beautiful and disheveled and streaming with tears pushes Marmalade aside with an imperious gesture and dashes into the room. She speaks: —
Napoleon, what is this? What does it mean? Tell me it is not true? You could not dare?
Napoleon (timidly): I think there is some mistake. Not dare what?
Josephine: To divorce me? You could not? You would not? Ah! heartless one, you could not do it.
She falls upon Napoleon’s neck weeping convulsively.
The Emperor: Josephine, there has been a delusion, a misunderstanding, of course I would not divorce you. Who dares hint at such a thing?
Josephine: Outside, in the waiting room, in the court they are all saying it.
Napoleon: Ha! Let them dare! They shall answer with their heads.
Josephine: Ah, now, you are my own dear Napoleon. Let me fold you in my arms. Let me kiss you on the top of the head. (She hugs and kisses the Emperor with enthusiasm.)
Napoleon: Ah, Josephine, how much I love you.
A voice is heard without. Colonel Escargot enters rapidly. He is deadly pale but has a triumphant look on his face. He salutes.
Sire, everything is saved.
Napoleon: Ah! So the battle was not lost after all.
No, Sire, your orders were sent by semaphore telegraph. Masséna withdrew his rear and thrust out his centre. A panic broke out in the ranks of the enemy.
Ha! The enemy? Who are they?
We are not sure. We think Russians. But at least, Sire, they are fleeing in all directions. Masséna is in pursuit. The day is ours.
The Emperor: It is well. But you Colonel Escargot, you are wounded!
The Colonel (faintly): No, Sire, not wounded.
Napoleon: But, yes, —
Colonel Escargot: Not wounded, Sire, killed, I have a bullet through my heart.
He sinks down on the carpet.
The Emperor bends over him.
Escargot (feebly): Vive l’Empereur. (He dies.)
Napoleon (standing for a moment and looking at the body of Colonel Escargot): Alas! Josephine, all my victories cannot give me back the life of one brave man. I might have known it at the start.
He remains in reflection. “I should have chosen at the beginning. Tranquillity or conquest, greatness or happiness, — Des Deux Choses L’Une.”
And as he says that the curtain slowly sinks upon the brooding Emperor. The play is over. In fact there is no need to go on with it. Now that the audience know why it is called Des Deux Choses L’Une, there is no good going any further. All that is now needed is the usual Transfiguration Scene.
Napoleon, dying at St. Helena, seen in a half light with a vast net curtain across the stage and a dim background of storm, thunder, and the armies of the dead —
That, with a little rumbling of cannon — the distant rolling of a South Atlantic storm —
And then, — the pomp has passed, — turn up the lamps and let the matinée audience out into the daylight.
But we must not suppose for a minute that French history has any monopoly of dramatic interest. Oh, dear, no. We have recently discovered that right here on the North American continent there is material teeming with dramatic interest. Any quantity of it. In fact it begins right at the start of our history and goes right on. Consider the aboriginal Indian; what a figure for tragedy. Few people perhaps realize that no less than seventeen first-class tragedies, each as good as Shakespeare’s, and all in blank verse, have been written about the Indians. They have to be in blank verse. There was something about the primitive Indian that invited it. It was the real way to express him.
Unfortunately these Indian tragedies cannot be produced on the stage. They are ahead of the age. The managers to whom they have been submitted say that as yet there is no stage suitable for them, and no actors capable of acting them, and no spectators capable of sitting for them. Here is a sample of such a tragedy.
METTAWAMKEAG
An Indian Tragedy
The scene is laid on the shores of Lake Mettawamkeag near the junction of the Peticodiac and the Passamoquidiac Rivers. The sun is rising.
Enter Areopagitica, an Indian chief.
With The Encyclopedia — a brave of the Appendixes.
And Pilaffe de Volaille, a French Coureur des bois.
Areopagitica:
Hail, vernal sun, that thus with trailing beam
Illuminates with gold the flaming east,
Hail, too, cerulean sky that touched with fire
Expels th’ accumulate cloud of vanished night.
The Encyclopedia: Hail! Oh! Hail.
Pilaffe de Volaille: Hêle! Oh, hêle.
Areopagitica:
All nature seems to leap with morn to song,
Tempting to gladness the awakening bird,
E’en the dark cedar feels the gladsome hour
And the light larch pulsates in every frond.
Who art thou? Whence? And whither goest thou?
Pilaffe de Volaille:
Thrice three revolving suns have waxed and waned
Since first I wended hither from afar,
Nor knowing not, nor caring aught, if here or there,
Who am I? One that is. Whence come I? From beyond,
The restless main whose hyperboreal tide
Laves coast and climes unknown, Oh, Chief, to thy sagacity.
From France I came.
Areopagitica: Hail!
(What Pilaffe di Volatile means is that he has been out here for nine years and lives near Mettawamkeag. But there is such a size and feeling about this other way of saying it, that it seems a shame that dramas of this kind can’t be acted.)
After they have all said, “Oh, hail!” and “Oh, hêle,” as many times as is necessary, Areopagitica and The Encyclopedia take Pilaffe de Volaille to the Lodge of the Appendixes.
There he is entertained on hot dog. And there he meets Sparkling Soda Water, the daughter of Areopagitica.
After the feast the two wander out into the moonlight together beside the waterfall. Love steals into their hearts. Pilaffe de Volaille invokes the moon.
“Thou silver orb whose incandescent face
Smiles on the bosom of the turgid flood
Look deep into mine heart and search if aught
Less pure than thy white beam inspires its love,
Soda, be mine!”
Soda Water speaks:
Alas! What words are these! What thought is this!
Thy meaning what? Unskilled to know,
My simple words can find no answer to the heart’s appeal,
Where am I at?
Pilaffe de Volaille: Flee with me.
Soda Water: Alas!
Pilaffe: Flee.
Soda Water (invoking the constellations of the Zodiac):
Ye glimmering lights that from the Milky Way
To the tall zenith of the utmost pole
Illume the vault of heaven and indicate
The inclination of the axis of the earth
Showing sidereal time and the mean measurement
Of the earth’s parallax,
Help me.
Pilaffe de Volaille (in despair): “Oh, hêle!”
Both the lovers know that their tragic love is hopeless. For them, marriage is out of the question. De Volaille is sprung from an old French family, with eight quarters of noble birth, a high average even at a time when most people were well born. He cannot ally himself with anything less white than himself. On the other hand Sparkling Soda knows that, after the customs of her time, her father has pledged her hand to the Encyclopedia. She cannot marry a pale face.
Thus, what might have been a happy marriage, is queered from the start. Each is too well born to stoop to the other. This often happens.
Standing thus in the moonlight beside the waterfall the lovers are surprised by Areopagitica and The Encyclopedia. In despair Sparkling Soda leaps into the flood. The noble Encyclopedia plunges headlong after her into the boiling water and is boiled. De Volaille flees.
Areopagitica vows vengeance. Staining himself with grape juice he declares a war of extermination against the white race. The camp of the French is surprised in a night attack. Pilaffe de Volaille, fighting with the courage of his race, is pierced with an Indian arrow. He expires on the spot, having just time before he dies to prophesy in blank verse the future greatness of the United States.
Areopagitica, standing among the charred ruins of the stockaded fort and gazing upon the faces of the dead, invokes the nebular Hypothesis and prophesies clearly the League of Nations.
The same dramatic possibilities seem to crop up all through American history from Christopher Columbus to President Hoover.
But to see the thing at its height it is better to skip about three hundred years in one hop and come down to what is perhaps the greatest epic period in American history, — the era of the Civil War.
This great event has been portrayed so often in the drama and the moving pictures that everybody knows just how it is dealt with. It is generally put on under some such title as the Making of the Nation, or The Welding of the Nation, or the Riveting of the Nation, — or, The Hammering, or the Plastering, — in short, a metaphor taken from the building and contracting trades. Compare this: —
FORGING THE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT
A Drama of the Civil War
The scene is laid in the Council room of the White House. There are present Abraham Lincoln, Seward, Staunton, Artemus Ward, and the other members of the cabinet.
Lincoln (speaking very gravely): Mr. Secretary, what news have you from the Army of the Potomac?
Staunton: Mr. President, the news is bad. General Halleck has been driven across the Rappahannock, General Pope has been driven across the Roanoke, and General Burnside has been driven across the Pamunkey.
Lincoln (with quiet humour): And has anybody been driven across the Chickahominy?
Staunton: Not yet.
Lincoln: Then it might be worse. Let me tell you a funny story that I heard ten years ago.
Seward (with ill-disguised impatience): Mr. President, this is no time for telling stories ten years old.
Lincoln (wearily): Perhaps not. In that case fetch me the Constitution of the United States.
The Constitution is brought and is spread out on the table, in front of them. They bend over it anxiously.
Lincoln (with deep emotion): What do you make of it?
Staunton: It seems to me, from this, that all men are free and equal.
Seward (gravely): And that the power of Congress extends to the regulation of commerce between the States, with foreign states, and with Indian Tribes.
Lincoln (thoughtfully): The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
(In the printed text of the play there is a note here to the effect that Lincoln did not on this particular occasion use this particular phrase. Indeed it was said by someone else on some other occasion. But it is such a good thing for anyone to say on any occasion, that it is the highest dramatic art to use it.)
Lincoln (standing up from the table to his full height and speaking as one who looks into the future): Gentlemen, I am prepared to sacrifice any part of this Constitution to save the whole of it, or to sacrifice the whole of it to save any part of it, but what I will not do is to sacrifice all of it to save none of it.
