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قراءة كتاب The Surrender of Calais: A Play, in Three Acts
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mark'd it.
La Gloire. Look you there, now! what I have hunted after, a whole day, to fix upon, hath he noted without labour. Oh, the capacious heads of your great officers!—No wonder they are so careful of them in battle; and thrust forward the pitiful pates of the privates, to be mowed off like a parcel of daisies.—But there lies the spot—and there will the mariners come. We are now within ear-shot; and, when they are there, they will whistle.
Ribau. And, till they give the signal, here, if there be aught of safety to be picked from danger, is the least dangerous spot to tarry for them. We are here full early.
La Gloire. I would we were not here at all. This same scheme of victualling a town, blockaded by the enemy, is a service for which I have little appetite.
Ribau. Think, La Gloire, on the distress of our countrymen—the inhabitants perishing with hunger.
La Gloire. Truly, my lord, it doth move the bowels of my compassion. Yet, consider your risk—consider your rank! The gallant Count Ribaumont, flower of chivalry, cream of the French army, and commander of his regiment, turned cook to the corporation of Calais!—carving his way to glory, through stubble-rumped capons, unskinned mutton, raw veal, and vegetables!—and, perhaps, my lord, just before we are able to serve up the meat to the town, in comes a raw-boned Englishman, and runs his spit through your body!
Ribau. Pr'ythee, no more objections.
La Gloire. Nay, I object not,—I;—but I have served your honour, in and out of the army, babe boy, and man, these five and twenty years, come the next feast of the Virgin; and Heaven forfend I should be out of service, by being out of my master!
Ribau. Well, well, I know thy zeal.
La Gloire. And yet your English rapier is a marvellous sudden dissolver of attachments. 'Twill sever the closest connexions. 'Twill even whip you, for ever, friend head from his intimate acquaintance, neck and shoulders, before they have time to take leave:—Not that I object;—yet men do not always sleep. The fat centinel, as we passed the outpost, might have waked with his own snoring; and—
Ribau. Peace! Remember your duty to me; to your country.
Yet, out, alas! I mock myself to name it.
Did not these rugged battlements of Calais;
This tomb, yet safeguard of its citizens,
Which shuts the sword out, and locks hunger in;
(Where many a wretch, pale, gaunt, and famine-shrunk,
Smiles, ghastly, at the slaughter's threat, and dies:)
Did not these walls—like Vulcan's swarthy arms,
Clasping sweet beauty's queen—encircle now,
Within their cold and ponderous embrace,
The fair, yet, ah! I fear, the fickle Julia,
My sluggish zeal would lack the spur to rouse it.
La Gloire. And, of all the spurs in the race of mortality, love is the only true tickler to quicken a man's motions. But to reconcile a mistress by victualling a town!—Well; dark and puzzling is the road to woman's affection; but this is the first time I ever heard of sliding into her heart through her palate; or choking her anger, by stopping her mouth with a meal. An' this pantry fashion of wooing should last, woe to the ill-favoured! Beauty will raise the price of provisions, and poor ugliness soon be starved out of the country.
Ribau. This enterprise may yet regain her.
Once she was kind; until her father's policy,
Nourish'd in courts, stepp'd in, and check'd her love.
Yet 'twas not love; for true love knows no check:
There is no skill in Cupid's archery,
When duty heals a love-wound.
La Gloire. But, dear my lord! think on the great danger, and little reputation——
Ribau. No more! mark me, La Gloire! As your officer, I may command you onward: but, in respect to your early attachment, your faithful service, ere you followed me to the army, if your mind misgive you in this undertaking, you have my leave to retreat.
La Gloire. [Amazed.] My lord!
Ribau. I say, you are free to return.
La Gloire. Look ye, my lord! I am son to brave old Eustache de St. Pierre; as tough a citizen as any in all Calais: I was carried into your lordship's father's family (your lordship being then but just born) at six days old; a mere whelp, as a body may say. According to puppy reckoning, my lord, I was with you three days before I could see. I have followed you through life, frisking and trotting after your lordship ever since: and, if you think me, now, mongrel enough to turn tail, and leave my master in a scrape, why, 'twere kinder e'en to hang me up at the next tree, than cut me through the heart with your suspicions.
Ribau. No, La Gloire,—I——
La Gloire. No, my lord! 'tis fear for you makes me bold to speak. To see you running your head through stone walls for a woman—and a woman who, though she be an angel, has (saving your presence) played you but a scurvy sort of a jade's trick; and——
Ribau. 'Sdeath, villain! how dare your slanderous tongue to—but 'tis plain—'tis for thy own wretched sake thou art thus anxious—drivelling coward!
La Gloire. Coward!—Cow——Diable!—a French soldier, who has the honour to carry arms under his christian majesty, Philip the Sixth, King of France, called coward! Sacre bleu! Have I already served in three campaigns, and been thumped, and bobbed about, by the English, to be called coward at last! Oh, that any but my commander had said it!
Ribau. Well, well, La Gloire, I may have been hasty: I——
La Gloire. Oh, my lord!—it—'tis no matter. But, haply, you'd like to be convinced of the courage of your company; and if such a thing as raising the enemy's camp can clear a man's character, I can do it as soon as——
[Raising his Voice.
Ribau. 'Sdeath, blockhead! we shall be discovered.
La Gloire. Coward! 'Sblood! I'll run into the English entrenchments! I'll go back, and tweak the fat centinel by the nose!—I'll——
[Still louder.
Ribau. Peace! I command you, La Gloire! I command you, as your officer.
La Gloire. I know my duty to my officer, my lord!
[Sulkily.
Ribau. Then move not:—here, sir, on this spot.
[Pointing forward.
La Gloire. [Going to the Spot.] Coward!
Ribau. Speak not, for your life!
La Gloire. Cow——Umph!
Ribau. Obey!
[La Gloire stands motionless and silent.—A low Whistle.
Ribau. Ha! the signal! the morning breaks:—they arrive in the very nick. Now then, La Gloire, for the enterprize. Why does not the blockhead stir?—Well, well, my good fellow! I have been harsh: but—not yet?—Pshaw! this military enforcement has acted like a spell upon him.—How to dissolve it?—[A low Whistle.]—Again!——Come, come, La Gloire! I—dull dolt!—I have it:——March!
[La Gloire faces to the Left, and marches out after Ribaumont.