The Hundred Days

I

In this hour the Emperor knew that he had lost the battle of Waterloo. The sun was briefly hiding behind an angry purple wall of clouds, before setting. On this evening it disappeared more quickly than usual. Nobody, however, was paying any mind to the sun. All the men on the battlefield, both friend and enemy, had their attention fixed on the Emperor’s Guards. Steadily and deliberately, the Emperor’s Guards marched ahead with a sublime rhythm, over ground that had been soaked by the rain and clung tenaciously to their boots at every squishing step they took. From the hill against which they were advancing, the enemy fired incessantly. The bullets felled the Emperor’s grenadiers, those terrors of the enemy, the chosen of the French people, the brothers of the Emperor and his sons.

They resembled one another like brothers.

Those who saw them marching forth believed they were watching 20,000 brothers, 20,000 brothers begotten of the same father. They were as alike as 20,000 swords forged in the same workshop. They had all grown up on the same battlefield, in the golden, bloody, and deadly shadow of the Emperor. The mightiest of their brothers, however, who had breathed upon, touched, or kissed a hundred times each one of these 20,000 foot soldiers and 4,000 horsemen, was not Napoleon but a far mightier Emperor than he, namely the Emperor Death. They were not afraid of his hollow eyes. They marched toward the crushing embrace of his ever-receptive bony arms with steady confidence, as brother goes toward brother. They loved Death just as he loved them. Their love for Death made them all alike. And because they all resembled each other so closely, the appearance was given that as soon as one fell he rose right up again, whereas in reality it was only one of his brothers who stepped into his place. The appearance was thus created that the advancing line consisted always of the same men. The enemy soldiers fired just to relieve the holy terror that awakened within them again and again as soon as the smoke had cleared and they saw the unwavering steps of the very same men. Soon, however, one could notice that their square was growing ever smaller. And briefly the enemy was struck with an even greater dread, for the Emperor’s grenadiers thus accomplished a greater miracle than the typical one of legends and fairytales, in which one is immortal. The grenadiers of the Emperor were not immune to death, rather they were consecrated to death. And since they had realized now that they were hopelessly outnumbered by the enemy, they were no longer marching toward the enemy but toward their familiar brother, Death. But to show their other great brother, their earthly brother, that they loved him even in their last hour, they shouted with roaring voices, from mighty throats, which were stronger than the jaws of the cannon because it was loyalty itself that issued from their throats: “Long live the Emperor!” And so powerful was this cry that it drowned out the foolish and senseless rumble of the cannon. The loudest cries came from those who had just been struck. They shouted not only out of loyalty but also Death: “Long live the Emperor!”

Thus it was Death himself who spoke louder than the cannon.

When the Emperor heard the cries and saw that all of his 20,000 brothers on foot and his 4,000 brothers on horseback — even the horses themselves were his siblings at that moment — were lost, he too was gripped by an irresistible longing for death. He mingled with them, was now at their head, now on one of their flanks, then at their rear, then again at their head, and finally back in their midst. His back ached, his face was jaundiced and he was panting. When he heard his Guards shouting, “Long live the Emperor!” he drew his sword, lifted it toward the sky like a steely, imploring sixth finger, and cried through the tumult in a hoarse voice: “Death to the Emperor! Death to the Emperor!” But Death heeded neither his imploring sword nor his cry. For the first time in his proud life the Emperor began to pray, breathlessly, with a wide-open mouth and throat from which no sound would issue, as he galloped back and forth. He prayed and not to God, whom he knew not, but to Death, his brother; for of all otherworldly powers, this was the only one he had seen and often felt. “Oh Death! Sweet kindly Death!” he prayed breathlessly and soundlessly. “I await thee, come! My days are fulfilled, as are the days of my brothers. Come soon, while the Sun is still in the heavens! I too was once a sun. It must not sink before me! Forgive me this foolish vanity! I have displayed much vanity, but I have had wisdom and virtues too. I have known it all: power and superiority, virtue, goodness, sin, arrogance, and error! I have lived, Brother Death! I have lived and had enough! Come and get me before our sister, the Sun, sets!”

But Death did not come for the Emperor. He watched the sun set. He heard his wounded soldiers groaning. The enemy granted him a brief respite, time enough for him to walk helpless, ailing, and at odds with treacherous Death among the deceased and wounded. A soldier led his horse by the bridle and his adjutant hobbled along behind it. He could not yet grasp that all was lost, everything was destroyed, and he alone still lived. Only two days ago one of his generals had betrayed him. Another had acted foolishly and a third carelessly. But the Emperor quarreled only with the greatest of all generals, the greatest of his brothers — with Death. At the same time, in a strange voice that may once — so long ago! — have been his but that now did not seem to be his, he cried out to the soldiers who were retreating all around him and fleeing past him like so many flitting ghosts: “Halt! Halt! Wait! Wait!” But they did not listen. They continued along on their way and disappeared into the night. Maybe they had not even heard him. Maybe he had only imagined shouting and had in reality said nothing.

A soldier accompanied him with a lantern, and the Emperor signaled to him to bring it ever closer. For over and over he believed that he could recognize this dead man or that wounded one at his feet. Ah, he knew them all better at this hour than the living, scattering soldiers knew him! He gestured once again to the man with the lamp and bent over a tiny, remarkably tiny corpse. It was one of the little drummers of the Imperial Army. Blood was still trickling slowly from the corners of his childish mouth and congealing before the Emperor’s eyes. The Emperor bent lower and then kneeled down. The soldier lowered the lamp to give the Emperor some light. Upon the poor scrawny body of the dead boy lay his instrument, the drum. He still clutched a drumstick in his right hand, but the other hand had fallen into the black muck in which his body lay half-immersed. His uniform was spattered with long-since dried mud. His shako had rolled away from his head. The dead little boy had a pale and thin face saturated with freckles. The hair above the boyish forehead was reddish, like a glowing little flame. His small bright blue eyes were open and glassy. He had no visible wounds on his body. Only out of his mouth did blood ooze, slowly but steadily. The hooves of a horse must have knocked him over and killed him. The Emperor examined the little body very closely. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the trickling blood from the corners of the corpse’s mouth. He opened the boy’s vest. A red and blue handkerchief, folded four times, laid upon the little one’s breast. The Emperor unfolded it. Ah, he knew it well! It was one of the hundreds of thousands of handkerchiefs that he had once ordered manufactured for his soldiers when he was General Bonaparte, along with the pocket knives and the drinking cups. Ah, he knew it well, this handkerchief! On a blue background within red borders, it contained a map with blue, white, and red circles to denote the places where he had fought his battles.

This boy — who could hardly have been fourteen years old — was thus probably the son of one of his oldest soldiers. The Emperor spread the handkerchief across his knees. Half of Europe, the Mediterranean, and Egypt were shown on it. How many battles had followed these! Never again, thought the Emperor, will French soldiers receive such handkerchiefs! Never again will I be able to mark new battles! Let then this last one be included here! He demanded writing implements. They were handed to him. Then he dipped the quill into the silver inkwell, stretched the handkerchiefs across his knees and drew a firm line toward the north, to the point at which the red border already began. On this spot he drew in a large black cross. Then he carefully placed the handkerchief over the boy’s drum, looked into his face once more and suddenly remembered a radiant, sunny morning on which he had spoken to this youth, imagining the bright ring of that boyish voice in his ears and ordered that the pockets of the dead be searched. They found a crumpled note signed “Your mother, Angelina.” In this note, the mother had told him he should definitely expect her in his barracks on the following Sunday at four o’clock in the afternoon. The Emperor carefully folded the note and gave it to the adjutant. “Inquire!” he said, “and give me your report!” Then he rose. “Quickly,” he ordered, “bury the boy!”

Two soldiers hurriedly shoveled out a shallow grave. The boy was quickly lowered in, for isolated random shots could again be heard. The lantern flickered and the wind gusted from time to time. The clouds dispersed, the moon rose, and the night was clear, cold, and cruel. Small as the little corpse was, it did not fit properly into the hastily prepared grave. The Emperor stood there, silent and livid, while behind his back his white horse whinnied inconsolably. It was like a deep sigh, sounding a bit like a human lament and a bit like a human curse. The Emperor remained still. Dirt was heaved back in over the tiny corpse. The soldier raised his lantern. He presented it like a gun.

Then the Emperor drew his sword and lowered it over the fresh, shallow grave. “For all of them,” he was heard to murmur. “For all.” His adjutant, the General who was standing behind the Emperor, had no weapon. He instead raised his hat. Suddenly other generals of the Emperor’s — Gourgaud, la Bédoyère, and Drouot — were there. They had been watching him from a distance, and they now approached, respectfully but embarrassed and confused.

“The horse!” ordered the Emperor.

They rode in silence, the Emperor leading. At five o’clock in the morning, when it was already quite light and a delicate blue-tinged fog was rising slowly from the lush dark-green grass, he ordered a halt. He was shivering. “Fire!” he ordered, and a pitiful little fire was kindled. It burned, yellow and weak in the silvery-blue glimmer of the early dawn. The Emperor tirelessly fanned the weak yellow flames. He looked at the soldiers, his soldiers. They fled on all sides, passing the little fire — infantry, artillery, and horsemen. Now and then, the Emperor lifted his head. Some of the passing soldiers recognized him. They saluted silently. They no longer cried “Long live the Emperor!” Ever paler was the fire and ever stronger the morning light. A formidable silence enveloped the Emperor. The silence seemed to burn stronger than the fire. It seemed to the Emperor that the retreating soldiers of his army were making ever-larger detours around him. A great stillness descended upon the meadow. And the soldiers who went past and saluted him so silently — the officers with their sabres, the men with their fixed gaze — seemed no longer to be living soldiers. They were the fallen and the dead. That was why they were silent. That was why they were voiceless.

The little fire went out. The day broke triumphantly. The Emperor sat down on a stone at the roadside. They brought him ham and goat cheese. He ate hastily and mindlessly, as was his way. More and more fleeing soldiers passed by. The Emperor stood. “Onward!” he commanded.

He mounted his steed. Behind him he heard the galloping of his generals’ horses and from a distance the occasional sound of his coach’s rolling wheels, following further back. And he closed his eyes.

He fell asleep in the saddle.

II

To Paris! This was the only clear goal for the Emperor. One of the generals was riding close behind him. Although his entire retinue already knew that he had decided to return to Paris, the Emperor said once again: “On to Paris, General!”

“As you wish, Your Majesty!” said the officer.

The Emperor was silent for a while. The young morning foretold a glorious, triumphant day to come. Out of the blue heavens came the carefree jubilation of unseen larks and from a distance the faint muffled echo of marching soldiers. There was a melancholy clanking of weapons, a yearning weary neighing of horses, the rising and then dying murmur of human voices, and here and there a loud and quickly subsiding shout or rather curse. To the left and right, and through field and meadow the disorderly troops stomped along. The Emperor lowered his head. He forced himself to see only the undulating silvery mane of his animal and the yellowish-gray strip of road along which he rode. He became engrossed in them. But against his will all the miserable sounds forced themselves upon him from both sides, and it was as if his army’s weapons were whimpering pitifully, as if the fine, strong, defeated, ashamed, and humiliated weapons were weeping. He knew that even if he had a hundred more years to live he would never forget this sobbing of the weapons and horses or the whining and moaning of the wagons. He could avert his gaze from the retreating soldiers. The clinking whimper of the weapons, however, pierced his heart. In order to fool himself and the others into believing that he was nevertheless planning some further undertaking, he ordered that guards be posted to look for deserters and arrest and punish anyone who strayed from the road, yet even as he was so busy issuing them his mind was not on the superfluous orders. He thought of Paris, of his Minister of Police, of the deputies, of all his true enemies who at this point seem to him more dangerous even than the Prussians or the English. Twice he ordered a halt for he had decided to arrive at night.

In Laon, before the tiny post office, stood a crowd — officials, officers of the Garde Nationale, and curious villagers with their good-tempered peasant faces. It was quite still and the sky was becoming noticeably darker. The hitched horses before the station neighed, happy about the oats they were being fed, a flock of geese honked busily home to their pen and in the distance could be heard the peaceful lowing of cows, the cheerful crackle of a herdsman’s whip and a sweet fragrance of lilac and chestnut mixed in with the acrid odor of dung, hay, and manure. In the low room of the post office it was already getting dark. Someone lit the solitary three-candled lantern. It seemed to the Emperor only to intensify the darkness in the room. Four additional lanterns with protective glass were brought inside. Four soldiers positioned themselves in the corners of the room and held the lanterns steady. The wide double door was fully open and directly opposite sat the Emperor on the smooth-planed bench that was intended for travelers awaiting the next arriving coach. So there he sat, legs spread, in his dirty and stained white breeches and mud-spattered boots, hands pressed down on his chubby thighs, and head lowered. The light fell on him from all four sides and from the lantern in the center. He was sitting directly opposite the open door and all the inhabitants of Laon stood outside and were watching him with an unwavering gaze. He felt like he was sitting on the defendant’s bench and they stood in silent, terrifying judgment over him. They would soon deliver their verdict, an unnervingly quiet one, and they were already deliberating silent and voiceless over this deaf, dumb, and awful verdict. He stared for some time at the strip of floor between his boots, at the two narrow planks of wood. He thought of Paris and his Police Minister and suddenly recalled the broken crucifix that he had brushed to the ground in his palace. The two dirty gray planks at his feet transformed themselves into the narrow golden-brown strip of inlaid flooring in his room, the Minister Fouché was announced, and a boot hid the fragments of the ivory cross. The Emperor stood up, for he could sit no longer. He began to walk back and forth, back and forth, back and forth across the small low room of the station. No sound issued from the throng of people outside the open door, yet he waited to hear some human voice. This silence was frightful; he waited for a single word, not a shout, not a cheer, but only a word, just a single human word. But nothing came. He walked up and down, acting like he did not know that the people at the door were watching him, yet it hurt him to know that they were staring. The deadly silence that these people emitted, their immobility, their undying and unwavering patience, their quiet eyes, and their immeasurable sorrow filled him with a previously unknown horror. The silent, limping general, his adjutant, his shadow, had risen with him. The adjutant hobbled exactly three steps behind. Suddenly the Emperor turned to the open door. He stood for a brief moment as if awaiting the customary cry of “Long live the Emperor!” — the cry that his ear so loved, the cry that so softly caressed his heart. The Emperor stepped to the threshold. The lanterns in the room illuminated his back, so the crowd outside could not make out his face. The people outside saw only the light behind his back. He was facing them and his countenance was lost within the blue-black darkness of the quickly descending summer night. The already silent people seemed to become even more still. The nocturnal crickets cheeped at full volume in the surrounding fields. Already had the stars begun to twinkle in the sky, kindly and silver. The Emperor stood in the open double doorway. He waited. He waited for some word. He was used to shouts, to cries of “Long live the Emperor!” Now the black dumbness of these people and the night washed over him and even the pleasant silver stars seemed sullen and hostile. Directly in front of him, in the first row, a bareheaded peasant spoke. His simple face was made clearly visible by the bright night as he said aloud to his neighbor: “That’s not the Emperor Napoleon! He’s Job. He isn’t the Emperor!” Immediately, the Emperor turned. “Onward! Forward!” he said to General Gourgaud.

He entered his carriage. “He’s Job! He’s Job!” rang in his ears.

“He’s the Emperor Job!” the wheels repeated.

The Emperor Job continued toward Paris.

III

He sat alone in the carriage. His back hurt horribly. The carriage sped along the smooth highway. It cut through the night, whose silvery blue luster and sweet summer scents of grass and dew were wafted in on both sides through the open carriage windows. The Emperor had long since overtaken his retreating soldiers. The pathetic clink of the defeated weapons could no longer be heard far and wide. All that was audible was the steady rapid hoof beats of the horses on stones, dirt, and wooden bridges, and the dreary rumbling of the wheels. Occasionally they seemed to speak. They repeated now and then: “He’s Job! He’s Job! He’s Job!” Then they fell silent once more, as if they remembered that they were mere carriage wheels and had no right to take on a human voice. Because of his severe back pain the Emperor reclined. But as he lay practically prostrate upon the cushions a new and different pain suddenly awakened, stabbing like a dagger through his heart, lasting only a second before darting from his chest and transforming into a delicate saw that began slowly and finely to slice through his intestines. The Emperor sat upright again. He looked through the windows of his carriage, left and right. This summer night was endless. Paris seemed further away than ever. As quickly as they were moving, it seemed to the Emperor that the horses were gradually slowing and he leaned out the window and shouted: “Faster, faster!” Down came the whip like the crack of a shot awakening a long, solemn sharp echo in the still of the night. The wheels began anew their rumbling chant: “He’s Job!” And the old familiar pain returned to the Emperor’s back.

He thought of old Job. He no longer had any clear idea of those biblical stories. He had never wished to conjure one of the downtrodden servants of God in his imagination. If ever he had made a fleeting attempt to conceive a vague notion of one of them, he saw him basically in the form and effeminate costume of a priest. Yes, a priest! And at that moment, for the first time, he could see old Job quite clearly; he even recalled having once met him, immeasurably long years ago. Years that were as wide as oceans. And they were red, like oceans of blood. The Emperor had once seen old Job himself; he was the kind and fragile poor old man whom people called “the holy father” and whom he, the Emperor, had once brought from the Holy City of Rome so the old man could anoint him. The Emperor now saw the pathetic old man again. Job seemed to be sitting opposite him in the back seat, just as humbly as once he had sat in one of the armchairs at the Imperial palace. With his patient old eyes he stared into the bold impatient ones of the Emperor. And sharp and clear-sighted as were the Emperor’s eyes, he knew that the humble and frail old man could see more than he himself, the Emperor. Yes this old man was Job, thought Napoleon. And for a moment he was comforted by that thought. Then it seemed that the old man was trying to whisper something, leaning over so as to be better understood, and repeating: “You too are Job! One day we will all be Job!” Yes, so it is. The Emperor nodded.

Just then the rapid hoof beats drummed loudly upon a wooden bridge and the Emperor awoke. He looked out the window. The horizon seemed to be brightened by the lights of the nearby great city, his city of Paris, where his throne stood, and he thought no more of old Job. The wheels also seemed to have forgotten him for they now sang a different tune — “On to Paris! On to Paris! On to Paris!” Now everything will be fine again, thought the Emperor. Now I will reveal and punish the traitors. Now I will discipline the lawyers, gather my soldiers, and defeat my enemies. I am still the Emperor Napoleon! My throne still stands! My eagle still circles! A few minutes later, however, as they got closer and closer to the capital, he grew anxious again. He could still see his soaring eagle, but it was being chased and was soon overtaken by numerous black ravens that flew more swiftly than he. Surrounded by crows the Imperial eagle hovered.

What was a throne? Indeed, he the Emperor, who had erected so many and demolished so many, knew very well that it was just a piece of furniture, fragile enough to be smashed by accident. What was an empty throne, a throne without an heir? What was an Emperor without a son? Oh, if only his son still lived in this city! For whom else except his son should he reveal the traitors, scold the lawyers, round up his soldiers, and crush his enemies? For his vain and foolish brothers? For the lowly family from which he had sprung but that in reality sprang from him, as though he were the begetter and not the begotten? For his weak and traitorous friends? For the women who had succumbed to him, as was their nature, and who might just as easily have offered themselves to his fine grenadiers? For those children whom he had perhaps fathered with careless passion? For the army? Yes, perhaps for it alone! Yet he himself had allowed its destruction only a few hours ago! There was no army! His son and heir was far away and powerless! Only the throne remained in the city of Paris, an empty throne, nothing but an armchair of wood and velvet and gold! Worms were already eating through the wood. Moths were already gnawing holes in the velvet. Only the gold survived, the most permanent and deceptive of all materials, the devil’s confidante!

All at once the horses’ pace seemed too swift, the rolling of the wheels too hurried, and he wanted to order that the carriage be driven more slowly. He was suddenly overcome by a fear of Paris and of the empty throne, of the traitors and the lawyers. He needed a little more time to think things over but the city was nearing rapidly, increasingly fast as though it were approaching him so as to meet him halfway, with its teary face and its spectral throne. He wanted to shout: “Slow down! Go slowly!” But they had already reached the first lanes; he could already sense the proximity of the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. He wanted to ask what time it was, for he was puzzled at the darkness of the streets; it seemed to be well past midnight. According to his calculations, however, it could hardly be so late. All the shops were already closed. All the houses were lifeless. Their windows grinned with an empty darkness. He leaned out of the carriage window but could not tell who was now riding alongside. He had wished to ask what time it was, but it came out as: “What day is it?”

“The 20th of June, Your Majesty,” cried an officer next to the carriage.

The nagging pain in the small of his back grew stronger and the Emperor leaned back. He did not know whether he had asked incorrectly or whether the man outside had misunderstood him. “The 20th of June!” It was on the 20th of March that he had come to this capital, just like his pain and related to it, his old superstition returned and terrified him. On the 20th! What a date! His son had been born on the 20th, the Duke of Enghien had been executed at his order on the 20th, and he had returned home for the first time on the 20th! Yes, today was the 20th of June! It was three months, exactly three months! Then — Oh, he remembered very clearly — it was an ominous evening, a cold and spiteful drizzle fell from the heavens, but the people of France, the people of the Emperor, warmed the city with their very breath. They cried: “Long live the Emperor!” Torches and lanterns seemed to be as bright and eternal as the stars that were stubbornly denied by the heavens and the melody of the “Marseillaise” that rose up to him seemed powerful enough to send the clouds fleeing from the sky. A thousand pale bare hands reached out for the Emperor and each hand was like a face; it had been necessary for him to shut his eyes at such sheer triumph, light, and devotion. Now even the windows were black in Paris; it was a fine summer night, calm and silvery blue. The acacias’ scent was overpoweringly strong. The stars glittered doubly bright since the streets were unlit. Pleasant was the night now that he, the Emperor, was defeated! It had been grim then, on the night of his triumph! Cruel was the inscrutable God who so spitefully mocked the Emperor Napoleon!

When the coach stopped, there were no cheering cries — only a hatefully peaceful, a terrifyingly peaceful summer night. The Emperor heard the shriek of a screech owl coming from deep within the palace park. So great was his back pain, it was almost as if he himself had howled as the steps were let down and he prepared to descend. He noticed his old friend, the Minister Caulaincourt. The good man was waiting alone on the white stone steps under the silver-blue glow of the night sky. Behind him was the golden reflection of the light that streamed out of the windows of the Elysée. The Emperor recognized him immediately. He embraced him. It seemed that the Minister had been waiting an eternity there on the steps, waiting alone for the unhappy and pitifully defeated Emperor. The Minister had decided to receive the returning Emperor with one clearly consoling phrase: “Your Majesty,” he had wanted to say, “it is not over yet!” But as the Emperor stepped out of the coach this oft-practiced phrase died upon Caulaincourt’s tongue. When the Emperor embraced him, Caulaincourt began to weep hard and fast, tears that fell audibly upon the thick dust that had collected for days on the shoulders of the Emperor’s cloak. His tears were like candle wax dripping on the Emperor’s shoulders. The Emperor released himself quickly from the embrace, hurried through the door and to the stairs. As if to reward the loyalty of this Minister, whom at this moment he loved more than any of those who had been with him on the battlefield, he explained rapidly and humbly why the battle had been lost. Yet at the same time, he realized what a miserable and melancholy favor he was granting his friend — and he suddenly fell silent.

“What do you say?” he asked when they were in his room.

“I say, Your Majesty,” replied the Minister, and he tried to make his voice loud and clear, and to halt the tears that were already mounting in his eyes and choking his throat, “that it would have been better if you had not returned.”

“I have no soldiers,” said the Emperor. “I have no guns. I offered myself to Death. It rejected me.” He was lying on the sofa. He raised himself suddenly, sat up with a foolish deceptive hope that seemed to promise deliverance. “A bath!” he ordered. “A hot bath!” He stretched his arms. “A bath! And hurry!” he repeated. Water, he thought, boiling hot water! — he could think of nothing else. All at once he believed that hot steaming water had the ability to solve all puzzles, to purify the mind, and to cleanse the heart.

As he entered the bathroom, followed by his Minister Caulaincourt, the first sight that met his eyes was his loyal servant standing at attention beside the steaming water, as if on guard over the treacherous element that might perhaps betray the Emperor — as a general and his own wife had betrayed him. Through the second door, which led from the bathroom to the servants’ corridor, he saw one of the female attendants leaving at that very moment. He suddenly felt an obligation to say a kind word to her, probably one of the lowest members of his household, a word of farewell perhaps. He gave his servant the signal to bring her back. She turned and stood before him. Then she fell down and began to sob loudly. She did not even cover her face. She remained on her knees and lifted her face up toward him, tears streaming down from her eyes, creating a hot wet veil. The Emperor bent down slightly toward her. He recognized her. He looked at her meager freckled face and remembered her from the evening in the park, and at the same time he could see once again the visage of her son, the little drummer boy.

“Stand up!” he ordered. She rose obediently. He ran his hand quickly and gently over her cap. “You have a little son, right? Where is he?” asked the Emperor.

“He was with you in the field,” said Angelina. Through the warm wet veil of her tears she looked at him with fearless clear eyes, and her voice was equally clear and ringing.

“Go now, my child,” said the Emperor. As she remained motionless, he repeated: “Go! Just go!” Gripping her gently by the shoulders, he spun her around. She went.

“She will be told,” the Emperor ordered, “that her son has fallen and that I myself have buried him. Tomorrow she will be paid five thousand.” Turning to his servant, he added: “You’ll take care of it personally!” He allowed himself to be undressed and stepped into the bath. He had thought he would be able to remain alone in the hot water that he so loved and in which he felt cozily at home, but then his brother Joseph and the War Minister entered. He let them approach the bath and told them about the battle, becoming foolishly agitated, which he realized was pointless but could not control, and making accusations against Marshal Ney. Arrogance and shame filled him as he sat there naked in the water. Through the steam he could perceive their faces growing hazy, and he gestured with his bare arms, slapping at the water with his hand so it sprayed out of the tub high and wide and sprinkled the uniforms of the nearby men. The men did not move. Suddenly he once again had the feeling that all was lost and his excitement evaporated. He stopped speaking, leaned back, and from the midst of the hot water felt a great chill. He asked, so as not to reveal that he had suddenly become weak and helpless and yet admitting it after all: What should he do?

He knew at that moment, however, that his future depended not upon himself or on others but had been dictated long before by some terrifyingly unknowable, all-powerful decree. Oh! He had believed that as usual the bath would bring him strength and comfort. For the first time, however, he found himself helpless. Weary as he was from misfortune and numerous sleepless nights, his large eyes, which remained open and awake only on account of his immeasurable sorrow, saw clearly for the first time — despite the steam wafting through the room from the hot water — signs of weakness in the faces of his brother and his friend. Whatever they tell me, he thought, will be utter nonsense. They can only advise someone of their own kind. I obeyed special laws when I was great and strong; I must also obey special laws now that I am helpless and defeated. What do they know of me? They don’t understand me! They don’t! They understand me as little as the planets understand the sun that grants them life and around which they orbit! For the first time in his life the ever-alert Emperor had tired eyes; and for the first time he felt that one could see further and more clearly with tired unhappy eyes than with fresh sharp ones. Once again he thought of old Job and the Holy Father and the friends who had come to console him over his defeat, and like Job he rose and stepped naked before his friends. Only for a moment did they glimpse the naked Emperor, with his sallow, creased belly, the chubby thighs that always seemed so powerful and muscular in those snow-white Imperial breeches, the short strong neck, the rounded back, the small feet and dainty toes. This lasted for just a moment before the servant came and wrapped the short body in a great wide white flannel towel. The Emperor’s bare feet left distinct wet marks on the floor with each step.

A few minutes later Angelina returned as her duties prescribed. She saw the tracks of the Imperial feet and as she scrubbed the floor she felt she was defiling and insulting the Emperor’s footprints because she was forced to erase them. The servant, who was still organizing the bottles, soaps, and towels, approached her and said very gently: “I have something bad to tell you. Do you hear me? Something very bad!”

“Tell me,” she replied.

“Your son — ” he began. .

“He’s dead,” she said quite calmly.

“Yes. And the Emperor himself buried him.”

Angelina leaned against the wall. She was silent for a moment and then she said: “He was my son. He loved the Emperor. Just as I love him.”

“You will be given five thousand gold pieces,” said the servant.

“I don’t need them. Keep them,” replied Angelina. “Go!” she said “Don’t disturb me! I must work!”

Once she was alone she fell down to her knees, made the sign of the cross, and tried unsuccessfully to pray. She remained for a long time like this, on her knees, brush in hand. She looked as if she were attending to the floor but her mind was on Heaven, her dead child, and the Emperor.

Her heart was heavy; her eyes remained dry. She mourned her son, but also envied him. He was dead, dead! But he was buried by the Emperor’s hand.

IV

The next morning at ten o’clock the ministers assembled in the Emperor’s palace. The generals and the high officials of the Empire awaited him in the corridor. They stood motionless, arranged in two rows looking respectful and reverent, anxious and sorrowful. In reality, however, most of them were more fearful for their own fates than the fate of the country and the Emperor; and some were even inspired more by curiosity than by sorrow. Still others were concerned for the effects that all of this would have upon their reputations and the living they had earned since the Emperor’s return. They stood there solemnly, convinced that they alone were the critically important, the agents of destiny itself. Fouché was already waiting in the chamber. His face was even more pale and sallow than usual. He bowed his long gaunt head very low as the Emperor entered. But the Emperor did not look. He felt nonetheless both the veiled glance of his Minister of Police and the frank, ruthless eyes of old Carnot. The Emperor had no need to look at them all; he had known each one for years. He already knew what they were thinking and what they would say. He sat down.

“The meeting is now open,” he began with a calm voice. “I have returned,” he continued, “so as to halt the calamity that is about to overtake us. But for some time I will need absolute powers.”

They all lowered their gaze. Fouché alone fixed his light eyes unwaveringly on the Emperor. The whole time he was writing, note after little note, one after another without stopping, God only knew to whom, in plain sight of the Emperor. The Minister of Police wrote without even looking at the paper. He kept his gaze focused on the Emperor as if his untiringly scribbling hand had its own eyes. Now the Emperor stood. “I see,” he said, “that you want me to abdicate?”

“It is so, Your Majesty,” replied one of the ministers.

The Emperor had known it. He posed each question so as to confirm the answers he had long expected. Nonetheless he said — and it was as if a stranger were speaking through him: “The enemy is in our country. Come what may, I am a man of the people and of the soldiers. One word from me and all the representatives are done. I can still arm one hundred and thirty thousand men. The English and Prussians are weary. They may have won, but they are depleted. And the Austrians and Russians are far off!” All the ministers were silent. Once more, for the last time, they all perceived the sublime tone of the Imperial voice. They listened to him, but only to his voice itself, to the ring of his words, not to their meaning. The Emperor himself was well aware that he was speaking in vain. He broke off suddenly. Every word was useless. He was no longer interested in fighting for his throne. For the first time in his life since he had become powerful, he felt the bliss that renunciation brings. In the midst of his speech he was overcome by the grace of humility. He suddenly felt the blessing of defeat and a very, very secret satisfaction that he could on a whim order the dismissal or imprisonment — even the beheading or shooting — of these very ministers to whom he was speaking, these parliamentarians who were poised to overthrow him. If he wanted. .!

But he did not want. It was a blissful feeling, one he was experiencing for the first time, to be capable of something and not wish to do it. Throughout his entire endlessly rich and full life he had always desired and wished for more than any earthly inhabitant could be granted. Now, for the first time and in his very hour of disgrace and defeat, he had great power but did not want it. It was a euphoric feeling. It was as if he held a sharpened sword in his hand, one that made him happy precisely because it remained unused. He who had always believed that one must strike, and with precision, was now experiencing his first foreboding of the happiness that comes from weakness and is a gift of humility. For the first time in his strong and proud life, he knew of the nobility of the weak, the defeated, and the abdicated. For the first time in his life he felt the desire to be a servant not a master. For the first time in his life he felt he had much to atone for because he had sinned so greatly. And it seemed to him that to save his soul he had to open the hand holding the honed sword, so it would fall harmless and humble as he himself was at this moment.

Yet there still breathed another within him, namely the old Emperor Napoleon, and it was he who now began to speak to the ministers again. He could have a new army in two weeks; he could certainly defeat the enemy, so said the Napoleon of old. But he already knew that he would not be able to convince the deputies as he might the ministers. He hated the lawyers, and he well knew he could oust them, but he hated them too much to use force against them. In any event he who had always been violent no longer desired violence. He had used enough force! He wanted to abdicate. He no longer wanted to be Emperor. Occasionally out of the distance yet ever clearer he believed he could hear a call, sorrow’s seductive call. The voice became gradually louder and even more distinct than the shouts of “Long live the Emperor!” from the people outside the palace. For they were still shouting before the windows: “Long live the Emperor!” Poor friends, he thought, they love me, and I love them as well; they have died for me and they live for me, but I was unable to die for them. They want to see me mighty, so great is their love for me! I, however, I now love powerlessness. It is impotence that I love! I was for so long miserable in my might: I will be insignificant and happy!

But the people still continued to cry: “Long live the Emperor!” as if they knew what he was thinking and wanted not so much to pay him tribute as to remind him that he was their Emperor and that he must remain their Emperor. There were moments when these cries reached the very core of his being, and thus he knew that his old arrogance still lived within his heart. This old Imperial arrogance answered the cries, unheard by the crowd but strong within the Emperor’s breast: “They call to me, so I am still their Emperor,” said that old arrogance within his chest. But then another voice spoke from within: “I am more than an Emperor. I am an Emperor who abdicates. I hold a sword in my hand and I let it drop. I sit on a throne and I hear the woodworms gnawing away. I sit on a throne but already see myself lying in a coffin. I hold a scepter but I wish for a cross. Yes, I wish for a cross!”

V

That night found him sleepless. It was somber and sultry. All the millions of stars were up in the silvery blue heavens, but when the Emperor gazed at them, they seemed not to be real stars, just the pale, distant images of genuine stars. That night he once again felt he could see right through the seemingly sublime intentions of the Ruler of the Universe. He had yet to really know God but he now believed he could see right through Him. The Emperor believed that God too was an Emperor but a wiser, more cautious and therefore more lasting one. He, however, the Emperor Napoleon, had been foolish through arrogance; he had lost power through arrogance. Without that arrogance, he too could have been God, created the blue dome of the heavens, regulated the brilliance and position of the stars, and orchestrated the direction of the wind, the drifting of the clouds, the passage of the birds, and the destiny of man. But he, the Emperor, was more modest than God, carelessly generous and thoughtlessly magnanimous.

He opened the wide windows. He could hear the cheerful monotonous song of the crickets in the park. He detected the rich peaceful fragrance of the summer night, the overpowering lilac and the cloying acacias. All of it made him furious.

No longer did he want a throne or a crown, a palace or a scepter. He wanted to be as simple as one of the thousands of soldiers who had died for him and for the country of France. He hated the people who tomorrow or the following day would force him to abdicate; but he was also thankful to them for forcing him to resign. He despised his power but also his lack of power. No longer did he want to be Emperor, yet he wanted to remain Emperor. Now at this very hour they were debating in the House of Deputies whether he should remain Emperor or not.

Restless and lost, he paced, stopped a moment at the open window, turned around again, sat at the table, opened its hidden drawer, and attempted to organize his papers into three piles. Some were harmless and could stay; others were sensitive and had to be destroyed; still others he wished to keep and even take with him. He held a few of the letters to the golden flame of the wax candles. He mindlessly allowed the ash to scatter on to the table and the rug. Suddenly he stopped, gently replaced the condemned papers, and began anew his pacing. It had occurred to him that it was perhaps too soon to destroy these letters and he was gripped by a fear, his old superstitious fear that he might have carelessly given Fate a hint, a sign. This thought wearied him, and he tried to stretch out on the sofa. But as soon as he lay down, he felt more helpless than ever. Black worries seemed to be swooping down upon him like sinister crows on a corpse. He needed to get up. He looked again at the sky and then checked the time. This night was endless. Confused visions ran across his mind; meaningless images with no temporal reference rose up as if from totally different and newly unlocked compartments of his memory. Meekly he gave in to them, sat down, supported his head with his hands, and fell asleep in his chair.

The first hesitating call of a newly risen bird woke him. Day was dawning and a gentle wind softly swayed the crowns of the trees and blew the high casement windows. They creaked a bit on their hinges, startling the Emperor. He left the room. His servant, who was nestled on a chair outside the door, sprang up and made ready to follow him. But the guard at the gate, although standing fully upright with weapon shouldered, was in a deep sleep. He was quite a young lad, and a soft and delicate little black mustache grew above his lips, which opened and closed with every breath, while his chubby peasant cheeks were as pink as if he had not fallen asleep erect, weapon on shoulder, but rather at home at his girl’s side. Perhaps one day my son will look like that, thought the Emperor. “And I won’t see him. Such a mustache will sprout on his upper lip, and he too will be able to sleep standing, but I will not live to see it.” He put out his hand and tugged the young man’s earlobe. The soldier jerked awake and forced his round golden-brown eyes wide open, looking like a startled, uniformed fawn. It took him a few seconds to recognize the Emperor, at which point he mechanically presented arms, still half asleep yet already anxious and frightened. The Emperor left him standing there and continued on.

All the birds were celebrating the jubilant morning. The wind had subsided and the trees stood motionless in a still, light-blue splendor as if rooted for all eternity. This is the last day, thought the Emperor, that I will still be the Emperor of France. Yes, that was already definite. The morning itself seemed to say so; the birds were celebrating in all too spiteful and shrill voices and even the sun, which had now emerged above the thick and lush greenery, bore a malevolent yellowish-red face. The Emperor did not feel the summer calm of the morning, nor did he wish to. Nevertheless, while he walked for a few seconds with his eyes closed, he felt that God and His world had good intentions for him and that other men in his place, in this very garden at this very hour, in the blue-green-golden shimmer of the rising day, would have been thankful, humble, and happy. But the morning seemed to be mocking him. God’s eternal sun was rising, rising as it had done from the beginning of time, as if nothing had happened, on the very day his, the Emperor’s, own sun was setting. Night! It still should be night! And to avoid seeing the day grow any brighter, the Emperor suddenly turned around. He ordered the curtains drawn. He wanted to have a few more hours of night.

He fell asleep in his uniform, in his boots. He had forbidden anyone to wake him, yet they dared disobey, and his first thought upon waking was that even his lackeys no longer followed his orders. But it was his brother Jerome, his youngest and most beloved brother. Jerome stood there, before the sofa, and despite the already rich golden sunlight seeping in through the drawn curtains his brother looked pale white and bleary-eyed — a souvenir of his sleepless night.

“They refuse,” was all he said.

“I knew it!” replied the Emperor. He rose.

The familiar daily cries of “Long live the Emperor!” could already be heard before the palace. He sat down and said to his brother: “You hear that? The people want me to live but their representatives want my death. I don’t believe the people, and I don’t believe their representatives, either. I have only believed in my star. And that is now setting.”

His brother was silent. He lowered his head. He was young and he felt even younger and more foolish during this unfortunate time, yet at the same time he felt even now that it was his duty to invigorate and rescue the Emperor, his brother, who was like a father to him. And thus he said hesitatingly: “You’re still Emperor! You’re still Emperor! You mustn’t abdicate!”

“I will abdicate,” answered Napoleon. “I am not tired, but I, my dear brother, dearest of my brothers, I am changed. You see I no longer believe in all those things in which I used to have faith — in force, might, and success. That’s why I will abdicate. It’s true that I still cannot believe in that other thing, the Power that we cannot know. But you see, my brother, I stand today between two faiths! I no longer believe in humanity and I don’t yet believe in God. Yet I can already feel Him, I am already beginning to feel Him.”

He was speaking to himself; he was well aware that his brother did not understand. And it was true, his brother Jerome did not in fact understand and thought the Emperor was tired and babbling.

He was kind and honest and loyal, and he had no idea of the Emperor’s confusion, of his meaning or his sorrow. The Emperor knew it well. He continued to speak, anyhow, because he had been silent for the whole endlessly long night and because he knew that Jerome, the simplest and most dear of his brothers, did not understand him.

Jerome kept his head bowed. It was true that he grasped nothing. One thought alone filled him with terror: Soon they will come! Soon they will come!

VI

They came at ten o’clock in the morning. They wore solemn, sorrowful, and despairing faces. The Emperor studied them with keen attention, one after another — old Caulaincourt, his brother Joseph, the beloved Regnault. Others were waiting next door in the ministerial chamber. Fouché, the Minister of Police, was announced. “Send him in,” said the Emperor, “and immediately!”

He came in. His head was lowered and remained in this position so long that it almost seemed he actually had trouble straightening his back again and lifting his head. In his right hand he carried a thin portfolio of dark green Moroccan leather and in his left his ministerial hat. With even greater attention and scrutiny than he had viewed the others, the Emperor studied the most hateful of his enemies. It was as if he wanted to create a lifelong mental impression of all the minute details of this man’s figure; as if he had summoned him solely for that purpose. His eyes were feasting upon the appearance of this ugliest of ministers with the bliss of an artist who has found the perfect subject. He is still afraid of me, thought the Emperor. I can still disrupt him, disrupt first and then perhaps destroy. In that green portfolio he carries my death warrant, but only I have the authority to sign it, and he fears I still don’t want to. He doesn’t know me, and how could he? So little does the devil know the Lord! I’ll make him wait a bit longer! What a perfect specimen! What harmony between face, hands, manner, and soul! I have let him live and have not interfered, as God lets the devil live and doesn’t stop him. But now that I’m no longer a god, he lives by his own grace; by tomorrow he will live by the grace of the English, the Austrians, the Prussians, and the King.

“Look at me!” said the Emperor.

Fouché lifted his head. He wanted to speak but could not get the words out once he met the Emperor’s gaze. He had often merely shivered under this look. But now for the first time this regard also rendered him paralyzed. He suddenly had dry, rough lips, through which not a word could pass so that he involuntarily moistened them with the narrow and pale tip of his tongue. What harmony! thought the Emperor. His every little movement gives the impression of a snake. So true it is, this symbolism!

“Write to the gentlemen who await some word, that they shall have it soon. They can rest easy.”

Fouché approached the Emperor’s table. He laid his hat on a chair but retained the portfolio, gingerly took an empty sheet of paper from the table, placed it atop the portfolio, and wrote while standing.

The Emperor looked at him no more. He turned to his brother and ordered: “Write!” And he began to dictate: “. . I offer myself as a sacrifice to the hatred that the enemies of France harbor against me. May their word prove sincere that they have only pursued me and me alone. . All of you should unite for the general good, so that you may remain an independent nation. .”

He got that far. Around him stood his old friends and servants. Through the open windows the dazzling summer heat poured into the room in heavy, oppressive, and stultifying waves. Nothing moved. People and things were petrified; even the delicate yellowish muslin curtain before the window hung there in motionless, stony folds. One could believe that the world outside had also been petrified. Paris no longer breathed under the burden of this golden heat that was heavier than lead. All of France dozed in the brilliant sunshine, dozed and waited; the towns and villages slept as the enemy approached from the north; the sleepy grass in the meadows waited to be crushed and the grain in the field already realized it was growing in vain; no more corn would be ground or baked that year; and one could see still and dead mills scattered throughout the entire land. Only the dead stones in the street and lanes still breathed, but even their breath was no more than murderous heat. .

All of a sudden the shrill scream of a woman in the street came through the window, “Long live the Emperor!” This scream cut into the sweltering summer silence like a blinding spark in dead, dried-out timber. The men in the Emperor’s chamber began to breathe audibly. Their eyes came alive and opened wide focusing on the Emperor. Someone moved delicately, as if to test whether his stiffness had truly abated and others shifted in the same way. The woman’s shrill shriek had not yet faded when it was followed by the muffled thunder of a thousand male throats outside, “Long live the Emperor!” One of the men in the room opened his lips as if wishing to join in the cry; the Emperor saw him and his eyes commanded the man so threateningly to be silent that his friend’s mouth remained open for a while and everyone practically believed they could see the man’s tribute dying between his tongue and teeth. Once more, a third and a tenth time the people outside boomed: “Long live the Emperor!”

The Emperor had stopped dictating. He did not turn around. He sat with his back to the windows through which the cries came, as though he were intentionally and indignantly turning his back on them. But in truth they made him both sad and proud. He was still thinking of the last sentence that he had just dictated: “All of you should unite for the general good, so that you may remain an independent nation.” He had formulated this sentence the previous day and the day before that; but it had already been alive in his heart for a long time. Now that he had spoken it and given it life, it was as though the woman outside, this woman of the people, had heard it — along with the rest of the people. Yes, they were his people, they were his Frenchmen and women! He always said the right word to them at the right time, and even if he hadn’t said it, they would have sensed and noted just as they did now. He knew all the people outside, the men and women from the outskirts, both low-ranking and high-ranking officers, the women with their red scarves, many adorned with violets, all of them children of France; and the sweet melody of the “Marseillaise” as could be heard trembling through the great thundering timpani that were beating outside. There was suddenly an old, familiar, and beloved odor in the Emperor’s room, entering through the windows like an endearing guest — the smell of soldiers, the smell of the people, of gunpowder, of steaming soup in bivouacs, of burning, crackling sticks, and also the smell of warm human blood; yes, the breeze even contained warm human blood.

The Emperor felt an unknown pride rise up within, an entirely different one from the pride he had felt the evening after a victorious battle or after meeting with an arrogant and defeated enemy who was begging for peace. It was a new pride, a distant and much more noble brother of the pride that he had known so well. In the hour when he was humbly extinguishing his light, the people of France themselves lifted and supported him. He was laying down the crown that he had bestowed upon himself; and now the people were giving him a new crown, invisible but real, one he had always longed for but never understood how to attain. The entire time he had ruled the French people they had seemed uncertain and fickle. Now that he was smashing his scepter, he had become the true Emperor of France. Outside they continued to cry: “Long live the Emperor!” The expressions of those gathered in the room betrayed their growing uneasiness. “Shut the windows!” the Emperor ordered. They were closed, but the cries could still be heard, though muffled and distant.

At that moment one of the men sobbed aloud, a violent sound, immediately curbed and cut short, but so intense and upsetting that tears began to well up in the eyes of the others. “I can write no more,” the Emperor’s brother said very softly. He was practically whispering, but in the stillness all could hear it clearly.

They don’t know me, even now, thought the Emperor. I am proud and indifferent, I have just learned the meaning of sorrow, sadness makes me feel good. I could even say that I am happy. And my friends are weeping! Any of my grenadiers would have understood me. . And indignantly, he ordered: “Fleury de Chaboulon, sit down and start writing: ‘My political life is over. I nominate my son, under the name Napoleon the Second, as Emperor of the French.’”

Everyone was silent. The quill scratched hurriedly and brusquely. Suddenly they heard a loud drip fall upon the paper. In the stillness it sounded hard, as when a drop of candle wax falls on paper. But it was not dead wax, it was a living tear. It fell from the writer’s eye on to the paper. He stopped the next tear quickly with his left sleeve, without interrupting his writing.

The Emperor snatched the paper out of his hand. He signed it in flowing script as was his custom. And during the brief moment that his signature required there was a fierce and noble gleam in his lowered eyes that nobody saw, and his lips were somewhat crooked. They saw his mouth and thought the Emperor was suffering. But he suffered not; he only scorned.

He stood up, embraced the writer, and dismissed everyone. He had abdicated. And he felt as though he had just been crowned for the first time.

VII

He remained alone until the evening. Only a servant came, the young man whom he liked. He brought the type of meal the Emperor enjoyed when alone: one that could be eaten quickly and impatiently. The young man’s kind eyes were concealed by his half-closed eyelids while his normally tanned, smooth face was jaundiced and suddenly marked by numerous lines. He looked as though he were recovering from some horrid fright or a long and difficult journey, or perhaps a wild dream. “Stay here!” said the Emperor. “Sit down and get that book over there” — he pointed to the little table on which lay a stack of books and maps. “Read to me, beginning or middle, it doesn’t matter.”

The servant obeyed. He sat down and began to read. It was a book about America, and he began to read from the first page, out of respect for the book and also the Emperor. He read deliberately and attentively in a monotonous drone, as he had read when he was a schoolboy, impressing everything on his mind — the nature of the soil, the plants, the people; he read many pages without daring to lift his eyes from the book, sensing only that the Emperor was not listening anymore, but had stood up and gone to the window, then returned again to the table. He guessed that the Emperor would soon begin to speak and became unsettled and read ever faster. “Enough!” The Emperor said. “Look at me!” The servant stopped in mid-sentence. He looked at the Emperor. “Have you been crying, my son?” asked the Emperor.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” — and he felt the tears welling up again.

“Look here, you are young,” began the Emperor. “You don’t yet understand the ways of the world and the laws of life. Heed what I’m about to tell you, but don’t repeat it to the whole world — and, above all, never write it down. For one day, I know, you too will wish to pen your memoirs. We all do, we who have really lived. So keep it to yourself, what I’m about to say: everything obeys incomprehensible but very definite laws — the stars, the wind, migratory birds, emperors, soldiers, all men, all plants. The law to which I am subject has been fulfilled. Now I will finally try to live. Understand?” The servant nodded. “Tell me,” asked the Emperor, “are you weeping over my misery? Do you take me for unhappy?”

The servant rose, but could not answer. He opened his mouth, hesitated, lowered his gaze, and said: “Your Majesty, I know only that I myself am very unhappy.”

“Very well, go!” the Emperor ordered. “I must be alone!”

Now that there was no more noise, he heard once more the untiring cries of the people in front of the palace. Evening was already nearing and only the people, his people, the people of France, remained so persistent in their love. They already knew that he was Emperor no more but they paid no mind to his abdication and cried longingly, as on the evening of his homecoming: “Long live the Emperor!” — as if he had not lost the greatest of all battles and the lives of all his soldiers. Not of all! he thought suddenly. His military mind began immediately, almost against his will, to calculate — as it had done so many times before — that he still had 5,300 guards, 6,000 infantry, 700 gendarmes, and eight companies of veterans: the army of General Grouchy was still available. In a flash the Emperor had forgotten the entire day gone by, his resignation, his plans; he heard only the cries of “Long live the Emperor!” in the persistent appeals of the people. Once again the Emperor Napoleon, he walked briskly to the table and unfolded his maps; never — so he believed — had his mind worked with such speed and certainty; errors he had committed appeared to him now as childish, ridiculous aberrations; he could not fathom why he had been so blind. All at once he felt eliminated as if Grace had come over him and he believed he could guess, better yet know, the plans of his enemies; he lured, outwitted, trapped, entangled, beat, and destroyed them; the country was finally free, but he continued to drub the enemy, far beyond the frontiers; he had already reached the coast, the English were escaping in their ships to the safe shores of their island — how long would England herself be safe from the Emperor? One day he would even cross the sea, usually hostile but occasionally merciful, and take revenge, revenge! Oh, sweet revenge!

It was already dark, but the Emperor was so engrossed in his maps that he hardly noticed. He was not actually reading the maps. He was instead visualizing the actual villages, the hamlets, the roads, the hills, the battlefields, all potential and future battlefields, so many battlefields, thousands of battlefields, and suddenly all the beloved comrades of his youth rose up again; his fallen brothers, the generals and the grenadiers; Death returned them all to him and he needed no others. He would achieve victory with the resurrected dead alone. It would be the greatest battle of his life, the most wonderful, the most brilliant; victory was a game, practically enjoyable in all its awesome destruction.

There was a knock and he awoke. The Minister Carnot was announced. Two candelabra with lit candles were brought in. The chandelier was lit. The Minister was then let in.

“You have disturbed me!” said the Emperor.

“I beg forgiveness, your Majesty.”

“I forgive you. But you have wrecked the most beautiful battle. I can win. I can chase them to the borders. I need no more soldiers than are available to me now. I can win!”

“It is too late, your Majesty. You will be forbidden from remaining here. You will be in danger when the enemy arrives. The ministers cannot safeguard your life. You must leave!”

It was suddenly very hot in the room so the Emperor himself opened one of the windows, and with boundless force came the people’s thundering cry: “Long live the Emperor!”

He did not turn. With his back toward the Minister, as his ears inhaled the loving, beloved, boisterous cry of the crowd, he said aloud: “So I must go! In spite of everything, I must go!”

VIII

It was a warm, golden summer. It seemed to be the last, radiant tribute of the country, of the French soil and the French sky. The French soil and the French sky were saying: “You will never again see a French summer, Emperor Napoleon! Take the memory of this one, the most beautiful we can offer you.”

He was no longer an Emperor, he was a prisoner in the chateau of his first wife, the dead Empress Josephine. Her daughter Hortense lived there. She frequently reminded him of her dead, beloved, now doubly beloved mother. The way she tilted her neck, cut her food, or leaned back, the very distinct way she had of smiling when one said something she did not understand and did not care to understand — she had learned all these mannerisms from her mother and that was why the Emperor loved her. At the same time he was actually a little, just a tiny bit jealous of himself; he wanted his wife, the Empress Josephine, to remain the sole woman he had ever loved, just as he had been the sole Emperor of the French people.

Ah, but there was nothing left for him to do but give in to his memories of this woman. “I used to walk here with her,” he would say in this or that avenue, as if it were the only avenue along which he had walked with her. “Look here,” he gestured to Minister Carnot, not realizing that he had now passed the spot and was heading in a different direction, “here, as I have been wanting to tell you, was where my son visited her. She kissed him. What a woman. She embraced the child, the child of another woman, and it was really on account of this child that she had ceased to be Empress. Listen to me, Carnot!”

“Yes, your Majesty,” said the Minister.

This Minister had been a lifelong enemy of the Emperor. He had called the Emperor a betrayer of freedom; yes, a hardened, blunt heart was Carnot’s distinguishing feature. Now, however, on this golden evening, while they walked along, as he listened to the Emperor confiding his reminiscences with their fond distortion of the truth, confessing his errors and concerns, Carnot began for the first time slowly but surely to recognize that there were other laws governing the world, other laws than those to which he himself subscribed, other laws than those of strong conviction and conscience, loyalty and treason. “Your Majesty,” he said with the blunt candor of an old Jacobin, “when I hear you speak in this way, I ask myself why I had convinced myself for so long that I must consider you a traitor. Today, although sadly it is too late, I take you for the most loyal man in the world!”

“For that it is never too late,” said the Emperor softly.

A servant approached. He announced the Countess Walewska. It seemed so long since the Emperor had last seen her. She stood there holding her child — his child — by the hand. She wore a black dress and her face was partly veiled. He was startled by this sight for a second and hesitated, having the impression she had come to his funeral, that he was already a corpse. Perhaps she noticed his alarm, for she came toward him and bent over his hand. He took her arm and led her to the room that he had once furnished for himself for the sole purpose of consoling the Empress Josephine and making her believe he would be staying there often. He gave the boy his hand, smiled, and stood silently for some time facing the woman. He pointed at the sofa a couple of times but she remained standing. “I wanted to see you again,” she said. Not long ago her face had been just as sleek and delicate as when they had first met. Now it appeared gaunt and haggard. How quickly women changed, especially lovers and the afflicted! Her white, narrow cheeks had once been covered with a delicate silvery blonde fuzz — sweet moss in which his lips had delighted. Now those same cheeks were naked, bare, and sunken. Her lips were but a thin, severe slit.

“I have to beg your forgiveness, Your Majesty,” said this sparse mouth.

“Not at all, not at all; why, what for?” cried the Emperor.

“Well,” said the Countess, “that is why I have come. I must tell you. I must tell you,” she continued.

“Please do so!” said the Emperor almost impatiently. He already knew everything she wanted to tell him.

She was silent, startled at his impatience. She had already thought everything out carefully, but now all the words had vanished completely from her mind. She could not even bring herself to cry.

The Emperor approached her, gently laid his hands upon her arms, brought his wide, light eyes close to her face, and said: “You wanted to confess that you have not always loved me. I have known it for a long time already. You had love only for Poland, your homeland. You accepted my love to make Poland free. Only then did you learn to love the Emperor a little bit. Am I right? Is this what you wanted to tell me?”

“That is not all,” she said.

“What else?”

“I love you now, Your Majesty!” She replied and raised her face, almost defiantly. “I love you now, you alone, not Poland, not the Emperor. And wherever you go, I will follow.”

The Emperor stepped back. He was silent for some time, then spoke in the clear, hard voice with which he normally addressed his soldiers: “Go, Countess! There is little room by my side. Please go. I still love you. I will never forget you. I still love you.”

He watched her walk out proudly and firmly, the sleek, vigorous, strong legs he had loved, with their sturdy step that swayed her whole body and made her delicate, frail shoulders look strong, erect, and royal.

He realized that he had been hard on her. But she was the only woman he knew who understood him and loved his hardness. And she probably also understood that he could not remain with her any longer. He listened for a while. He heard her sobbing outside, behind the door. He heard the consoling voice of his daughter Hortense.

A great impatience gripped him. He did not want to stay any longer. His law had been fulfilled, and he was already hurrying toward new horizons. He sent for his brother and his friends — Bassano, Flahaut, and La Valette. “I wish to go!” he cried. “Where is the ship waiting? Where are the passports? Where am I going? I want to go, I want to leave!”

“The enemy is here,” General Lavalette answered quite calmly. “The Prussians are in Bourget.”

“And the English?”

“None have been seen,” replied the General.

The Emperor suddenly left the room. The four men looked at one another in silent consternation. Before any of them could speak, he had returned with his sword, booted and spurred, in the uniform of the gardes-chasseurs.

“I will stop them!” he cried so loudly that the chandelier clinked. “Get the horses saddled! I will stop them! I can; the French soldiers can! Go and tell the gentlemen that I want the authority to stop the Prussians. I no longer need a crown. I am no longer Emperor. All I need is one division! I am a division commander!”

Then he was silent. They all stood stiff and dumb. Only the chandelier trembled and clinked. From outside came strains of the tune being sung by marching soldiers. They heard clearly the officer’s command to halt and the abrupt side of boots. The soldiers faced the palace and cried: “Long live the Emperor!”

“So we ride tomorrow!” the Emperor ordered.

IX

But no! They did not ride on the next day. Barely had the men left the room, before the Emperor realized that he would not be permitted to have even one division. He unfastened his sword and flung it onto the table. He called for his servant. He asked that his boots and uniform be taken off. He felt ridiculous. He had displayed the élan of a little boy. Alas, it had been no more than a dream, an old and vain dream; no, he who had lost a great battle as Emperor could not win a small one as a colonel or general. He realized this and was silent as he was told that he was forbidden to defend the city. Paris awaited the enemy — he had known it for a long time, although they continued to shout outside: “Long live the Emperor!” Paris was already waiting for them — the enemy and the King. The shouts outside no longer had a true ring, but rather a historical one. They were like shouts in a theatre. They were no longer meant for him, the living Napoleon, but rather for the dead, the immortal one.

All that remained was to say farewell and then go far away, wherever the wind might blow, whether that wind was merciful or spiteful. He was prepared to let himself be carried forth and was even awaiting it with longing. He offered no more than a quick farewell to his brother, Josephine’s daughter, and his friends. Now all that was left was the most difficult farewell, taking leave of his mother!

For this last farewell he selected the darkest room in the house, the library. His mother’s eyes had long been weak and light-sensitive. She arrived, supported by two ladies in waiting and followed by the Emperor’s servant. She was wearing a black dress and wore no jewelry. As she entered, the room seemed to grow even darker. Even though she was walking with support, she seemed so tall and strong. She appeared to be so powerful, even though her face was thin, pale, and drawn, that the entire room was saturated with the somber breath of her gloomy dignity. Everything fell under her shadow. It looked as if she had come not to take leave of a living son but to bury a dead one. The room was already darkened on account of the dark-green curtains having been drawn, but now the room grew even more noticeably dark. Even the delicate golden brown of the book spines along the walls was muted. Only the pale face of his mother glimmered, only her large dark short-sighted eyes glowed. She motioned and the servant disappeared. The ladies in waiting followed. The Emperor himself supported his mother. It was hardly five steps to the wide dark armchair, but he wished that distance would grow ever greater. He hesitated at every step; he was even weaker than his mother, his knees wobbled and his arm trembled. She clung to his right arm and he felt for her left hand and kissed it with each stride. It was a large strong hand with long firm fingers bearing tiny wrinkles at their tips and shockingly white nails, and it sprang from a bony yet muscular wrist with thick blue veins on the bottom. How often had this hand scolded or caressed, even caressing as it scolded? He was a small child once again; gone were the stormy, bloody, terror-inspiring years of his fame. The sight of this motherly hand alone made him young and small. It was only now that he was truly abdicating, every time, every single time he brought his lips to his mother’s hand once again. As he gently set her down into the armchair, his elbow briefly touched her full breast and a pleasant shiver ran up his arms and to his heart; he quivered slightly. It was a blissful tremble, equally as delightful as those he had experienced as a child of his mother’s breast.

She seemed to tower above him and he felt quite small as he pushed a chair near her armchair. He would rather have been perched on a stool at her kind feet. He was now sitting opposite her, their knees practically touching, and she seemed to grow ever taller, prouder, and more noble in her armchair, while the Emperor made himself ever smaller, sinking lower into his chair until his head touched his breast. “Look at me,” his mother said in her strong, deep voice and she stretched out her hand and placed her fingers under her son’s chin as a signal for him to lift it. He obeyed and raised his head for a second, but let it drop down again at once, his shoulders trembling. His mother opened her arms and he fell forward, his head landing in her lap. Her fingers began to stroke his smooth hair, slowly at first, then ever quicker and more vigorously. Her fingers combed his hair, feeling with maternal delight as she tousled it and then smoothed it down again, stroked his hair, bent over, and kissed her son’s head. The whole time, she grasped him firmly by the shoulders, as if worried he would escape from her. He had no desire to leave, he only wanted to lay forever in his mother’s kindly lap, upon her black dress. Her hands roamed over his head, ten kind motherly fingers, while from above, her mouth spoke some words in the native tongue of his homeland. He did not catch their meaning clearly, and neither did he want to, for it was enough just to hear the old familiar sound of her voice, the language of his mother, his mother tongue. Often, so very often, he mused, I should have lain like this, with my head in my mother’s lap. Why had he sat in so many saddles, why had he ridden through so many lands? His mother’s lap was welcoming, so welcoming was his mother’s lap; saddles and battlefields were evil, so evil — and so were thrones. Crowns hurt; for a son’s head was meant to be in his mother’s lap. Out of this lap he had emerged, so long ago, forty-six years ago. He had ruled the world; if only he could die now just as he lay at that very moment, ending in his mother’s lap what had begun there. On his account, on the Emperor’s account, many thousands had died, many thousands of sons who otherwise would have been able, as he did now, to rest their heads in their mothers’ laps. He did not move. He lay there very still. His mother was startled. Suddenly she said: “Get up, get up, Nabulio!” “Nabulio,” she said, as she had called him when he was a boy. He obeyed and rose quickly. His eyes were quite dry and glistened brightly as though filled with frozen tears.

“I will go,” his mother said. “But I will not leave you, my child! I will follow you all over, most handsome and beloved of my children!”

“I go alone, Mother,” said the Emperor, firm and loud. Then, fearing he had been too harsh, he added: “You may be certain, mother, I’ll be back, we will see each other again.” He was lying and they both knew it, mother and son.

She rose, went to the door, looked around once more, put her arms around the Emperor’s neck, and kissed him on the forehead. The door opened, she went out and the Emperor followed her to the staircase but she did not turn around once the ladies in waiting met her. As he watched her going down the stairs, with her strong, erect posture, grand shoulders, and deliberate steps, he cried out: “Adieu, Mother!”

She paused, turned at the penultimate step, and said: “Adieu, my son!”

He turned quickly and entered the dead Empress’s room, the room with the sky-blue ceiling and stood in front of the wide bed for a long time. It was nearly as comforting as his mother’s lap. Only these two things could bring him joy: his mother’s lap and his beloved’s bed — and perhaps a third thing that he had not yet experienced, but would one day know, the embrace of Death, his good old brother. Night was ending and the morning was already dawning when he went to his room, removed his uniform, donned a brown coat, a round hat, and blue breeches, fastened his sword and exited the palace through a rear door. There were people waiting outside before the main gate, crying relentlessly, untiringly: “Long live the Emperor!” He stood there for a moment. The crowd thundered, the insistent cry of a persistent people. A barouche was waiting at the main gate so the people believed that the Emperor was coming out that way. The chirping of the nocturnal crickets grew ever weaker as the day broke with triumphant power. The first birds were already chirping. As if fleeing the sun, the Emperor hastily entered his coach. He did not look out. He drew the curtains and cried: “Forward!” in a firm voice. And they departed.

The wheels crunched with a soft melancholy and the axles moaned with human-like voices.

X

He fell asleep in the carriage. The sun rose, just as it always had, mighty and golden. The morning was already as hot as midday. The carriage wheels crunched along as the axles groaned. The Emperor’s three companions were silent. They studied his sleeping face. He was pale yellow, and every so often his mouth fell open, revealing his even, gleaming white teeth, before he sighed gently and closed his mouth again. They gingerly lowered the windows, on account of the untenable heat in the carriage. The fresh breeze awoke the Emperor. He forced his great, pale eyes open, ran his hand over his brow, and for a moment looked at his companions as if they were strangers he did not recognize. Then he smiled at them, as if to appease them, and asked if he had slept long and where they were. “Near Poitiers,” said General Bekker. Poitiers! — It was still far from the coast! The Emperor was very impatient. He wished to get to the coast quickly.

“Let’s hurry, gentlemen,” he said. “I long for the sea. I want to see the water, I want to see the water!”

They remained silent. They were astonished and a little startled. The Emperor’s words seemed bizarre to them and they exchanged uneasy looks. The Emperor noticed his companions were uncomfortable. He smiled. “Don’t be surprised,” he began, “that I long for the sea. I’ve had enough of the land. Fate truly has middling notions, like a middling poet. I was born amid the sea and I must see it again. I’d like to see Corsica too, but that is not to be. But the sea, gentlemen, every sea reminds me of Corsica.”

None of his companions knew exactly what he meant, but they all maintained solemn and attentive expressions. Still, he could tell that they understood nothing of what he said. How wide a gap already separates me from the common people! he thought. Only a week ago they understood a wave of my finger, a passing glance, every nuance of my lips, but now they do not even understand my clearly spoken words. One must, he thought further, speak very plainly to them. And although at that moment he had no desire for it, he said, just to be friendly: “May I have some snuff?”

He was given an open snuff box, took a pinch, inhaled slowly with pretended pleasure, then closed the lid. He was about to give back the little box when his gaze fell upon the lid. It featured a miniature portrait of the Empress Josephine — that endearing, smiling face, the wide tan cheeks, and the great noble red curve of her mouth. Her strong, slender neck gleamed white, and her enticing breasts peeked, dainty and inquisitive, from her neckline. The Emperor examined the box, closed it, ran his hand over the lid, brought it near his eyes and then his lips, and said: “May I keep it, General?” The General bowed silently. The Emperor held the box in his folded hands. He closed his eyes. He fell asleep again.

It was early evening when they reached Niort. He climbed out of the carriage at the Golden Ball Inn. Nobody recognized him. The innkeeper came along, thick, pudgy, and noiseless — himself a ball, a soft red rubber ball that moved as if some unseen player had pushed him, sending him rolling toward his destination. He even rolled up the stairs. He opened up the room and attempted a bow, but was wholly unsuccessful. As a desperate attempt to demonstrate respect and out of confusion over the gleaming carriage and the distinguished gentlemen, he said to the Emperor: “Your Reverence, here is the room.”

“You might have addressed Monsieur Talleyrand by that title,” murmured the Emperor. As the innkeeper was preparing to roll back down the stairs again, the Emperor grabbed his coat and ordered: “Stay here!”

The Emperor tossed his round hat on to the bed, and the innkeeper noticed his forehead with the black lock of hair and light eyes — and gave a terrific start. Downstairs in the breakfast room hung a portrait of the Emperor bareheaded. This same face was painted on all the plates, engraved on all the knife handles, and permanently imprinted in people’s minds. The gentleman looked like the Emperor, and the innkeeper rolled a step backward to the door. He wavered for some time between the impulse to drop to his knees and the fear that told him to flee the room as quickly as possible. But the Emperor, who could see the man’s misery, smiled and said once again: “Stay here! Have no fear!”

Yes, now the innkeeper was certain of the identity of his guest. He wished to kneel but because of his rotund body he could only fall down and thus he lay at the Emperor’s feet, stammering incomprehensibly. “Stand up!” the Emperor ordered, and the man rose surprisingly quickly and stood with his fat rounded back touching the door and his large black bulging eyes rolling (also like balls) pitifully and helplessly in all directions.

Just then there was a commotion outside; through the window came the joyful and melancholy whinnying of horses and the loud voices and coarse laughter of men. The Emperor went immediately to the window. Below in the plaza before the inn he saw soldiers, his soldiers and his horses. In the blink of an eye he forgot everything — his abdication and the sea for which he longed — only the soldiers registered in his brain. He forgot even the innkeeper, who was still leaning against the door, now resembling a neglected ball. One of the soldiers suddenly lifted his head toward the window and saw and recognized the Emperor. Within seconds all the soldiers were crowded beneath the window, longing faces raised upward, giving voice to that old cry through their wide open mouths: “Long live the Emperor! Long live the Emperor!”

He turned around. There stood the innkeeper at the door; he too was shouting: “Long live the Emperor!” — with such a resoundingly loud voice he could have been shouting in the open air and not a few steps away from the Emperor. Someone knocked, bringing news to the Emperor that the enemy was just outside Paris and that the artillery fire had begun.

“Write immediately to Paris!” the Emperor ordered. The General sat down, and the Emperor dictated: “We hope that Paris will defend herself and that the enemy will allow you ample time to await the outcome of the negotiations that are being conducted by your ambassadors. . You may now look upon your Emperor as your General and call upon my services as someone inspired solely by a desire to be useful to his motherland. .” But hardly had the General left the room with this message when the Emperor was again overcome by that already familiar feeling of unhappiness — by sorrow, by uncertainty, and by regret over the letter he had just dispatched. He was no longer Emperor. He had abdicated. How could he have believed, even for a moment, that he could still be a general? The country did not need him! It was exiling him too. He had come from the coast to conquer it. Now it was returning him back to the coast! He knew this. “Onward, onward,” he ordered. And: “The sea! The sea!”

XI

There it was, the sea that he had so craved, the eternal sea. He sat in a cramped room on the ground floor of a little house on the Île d’Aix. The bed, table, and wardrobe were all black, like ebony coffins. The Emperor woke several times during the night. The sea did not let him sleep. Long gone were the days when he was able to sleep in happy unison with the song of the sea. He had been a young man and it was his native sea, the sea that surrounded Corsica. Even when it was rebellious, its frothy waves betrayed a kind of tender joy amid the anger, and its crests of spray were not storming the shore but caressing it with stormy passion. That was what he hoped to hear now when, unable to sleep, he opened the window and listened to the regular, excessively violent crashing of the waves against the beach. Oh, how amicable it had been, his native Corsican sea! But this was no French sea; its waves seemed to speak English, the language of the enemy, the eternal enemy. From his window, he could see lights a few miles out to sea. The English ship Bellerophon was waiting. Its captain’s name was Maitland. These names, thought the Emperor, will become immortal through me, an honor they don’t merit! Bellerophon and Maitland! Hundreds of years from now people will still talk of them. By then the ship will have sunk or its parts been salvaged to build another; the captain will be lying on the ocean floor or in an English graveyard. I myself will be dead, although probably lying in a more solid coffin! But even that too will one day be gnawed at by worms. It will be a coffin like this black ebony dresser, like this black bed on which I’m about to lie and which already looks like a catafalque. But their names will be remembered — Maitland and Bellerophon, Bellerophon and Maitland.

The Emperor’s brother Joseph came to see him. The Emperor had been awaiting him for some time. When he entered, Napoleon thought: You should have come sooner. But he said, “Good that you’re here.” They embraced briefly and coldly.

“Well?” asked his brother. It was as if he were there to demand payment.

“I know what’s on your mind,” said the Emperor. “You’re wondering whether I’ve decided to escape from the English. No! I’ve decided to surrender to the English!”

“Have you thought this all out?”

“No. I haven’t. I stopped pondering once I realized that my poor brain refuses to think. I surrender to my heart. I know, I know, this makes me seem ungrateful. I know it. A few noble friends have concrete plans to whisk me away and maybe they would be successful. But I won’t go through with it, do you hear? I refuse! Sometimes when I can’t sleep — and I don’t usually sleep very well — I see corpses, corpses; all the corpses that lie behind me. If they were stacked upon each other, they would create a mountain, my brother; if they were spread out, it would be a sea of bodies. I cannot! How many cannon have been fired on my behalf? Can you count the shots, or even the guns? Going forward I will not have even a single shot fired on my account. Do you understand?”

“You’re in grave danger,” said his brother. “They could kill you.”

“Then it will be one more life lost,” replied the Emperor. “I have already lost so many!”

He lay upon the high black bed, next to which was a small ebony table with a three-armed candlestick, and closed his eyes, the flickering candles casting eerie, wavering swaths of light over his face. It gave his brother the impression that the Emperor was dead and lying on his bier.

My brother should go off someplace alone, thought the Emperor, with the money he has acquired and saved. What do they want with me?

“Leave me alone, all of you!” he said. “Don’t worry about me, my destiny will be fulfilled. Go away, to the New World, start a new life!” Once again, the Emperor felt that vague suspicion that had troubled him previously — that they all wanted to save him and they did love him, but they also wanted to tie their names to his misfortune just as they had formerly clung to him when he was successful.

“Leave me be!” he repeated. “I share the fate of Themistocles. He too was alone. I go to the enemy. I’ve written the English Prince Regent. I’m placing myself in his hands.”

“I must warn you once more,” said his brother. “They will take you prisoner. They will keep you caged like a vicious animal. I have confidential reports to this effect. Captain Maitland has secret orders from the admiral to get you on that ship by any means necessary, with subterfuge or force.”

“He will not need to employ either one. Tomorrow or the day after I will go to him freely.”

“Then let us say farewell,” said his brother in a cold, practically hostile voice and rose. The Emperor sprang up. He opened his arms. They exchanged two kisses, one upon the cheek and one upon the forehead.

“We shall see each other again,” said the Emperor. He waited. He hoped that his brother might still say: “Take me with you! I shan’t leave you!”

But all his brother said was: “You’ll be back. We’ll work toward it and fight for it.”

“Poor fighters,” murmured the Emperor. And then: “Farewell!” he added in a loud firm voice. He turned to the window and listened to the roaring measured crash of the waves to which he would surrender himself the next day or the day after; to an enemy ship and to enemy waves.

XII

He went to bed in his clothes. It was still early. The summer sun, large and hot, sank slowly into the sea, casting a warm red reflection on the windows that was mirrored in the glossy black furniture. The white cushions on which the Emperor was resting were tinged with a kind of golden blood. The reddish shimmer fell upon the Emperor’s sleeping countenance for a long time and transformed it into a bronze face. A few steps away from the bed, stiffly perched upon one of the stiff-backed chairs, sat the Emperor’s servant. The Emperor wished to be awakened punctually at midnight.

The red reflection faded, replaced by a silver-gray glow. A lighthouse blinked in the distance and sent a fleeting intermittent glimmer through the windows. The only sounds were the quiet breathing of the sleeping Emperor and the roar of the eternally wakeful sea. The servant did not move. It grew dark but he left the candles unlit. Every so often he glanced at the little clock on the mantelpiece. The time passed slowly; the hours did not fly by as usual, even though the clock was ticking with its normal, everyday, diligent regularity. He could also hear a bell tolling from the church tower. But between one peal and the next lay eternities filled with stillness, deep black eternities.

The servant sat there stiffly. He feared he would fall asleep, so finally he rose cautiously and tiptoed across the room. Even as softly as he tread, the Emperor woke immediately, sat up and asked:

“How late is it?”

“Not yet midnight, your Majesty,” replied the servant.

“Will everything be ready?” asked the Emperor.

“By eleven o’clock everything will be loaded, your Majesty.”

“That’s good,” said the Emperor. He lay down again, eyes open.

The door seemed to suddenly open. He wanted to call out but was unable to speak. He well knew that he was lying there half-asleep and powerless, but at the same time he pictured himself fully dressed walking across the great red room in the Tuileries. The door closed again but it was no longer the door of the shabby little room where he lay sprawled and helpless, but the great gilt-decorated double door in the Tuileries. Into the room came an old man wearing a long red soutane that failed completely to cover his polished buckled shoes. He walked hesitatingly and bowed numerous times. The Emperor got up from the bed, suddenly wide awake and young again, booted and spurred. As he crossed the room to greet the old man, his spurs clinked loudly, too loudly, although the thick carpet should have dulled the sound, and his sword smacked against the hard lacquer of his boot with an unseemly noise.

“Have a seat, Holy Father,” he said and pointed to a wide red plush armchair and was surprised to find himself speaking so informally to the old man.

The old man sat down and carefully arranged the pleats of his cassock over his knees. Out of modesty he tried to hide his shoes. He folded his hands in his lap, and the Emperor saw that they were the thin pale hands of an ancient man with a thousand intertwining little blue veins.

“Your Majesty,” said the old man, his bluish lips quivering, “why have you sent for me?”

The Emperor remained at his side and replied: “Because I am the Emperor Napoleon! I need the crown and the blessing of Heaven. It is beneath me to make a pilgrimage to Rome. I have conquered Heaven itself. I have brought Heaven down to earth. I should not have to make a pilgrimage to Rome! What is Rome compared with Heaven? The stars are my friends! What is the See of Rome compared with the stars? I want the Imperial Crown. I want to be anointed. The stars themselves have blessed me. The divine stars. I have sent for you, Holy Father, so that mankind will believe in me!”

“You are only an emperor,” said the old man. “You know nothing about the stars! You have displayed violence toward me. You are violent with everyone! And they obey you, but obedience of men of violence is different from mine. For I am not a violent man! I am the only man of peace who obeys you — and that will be your undoing. Thus far you have conquered only men of violence. I alone, I have no weapons or soldiers, and I obey you because I am powerless. Nothing is as dangerous to the powerful as the obedience of the powerless. The weak defeat the mighty!”

“I will,” proclaimed the Emperor, “make the Church of Christ great and mighty!”

“The greatness and might of the church cannot be guaranteed by the Emperor Napoleon,” replied the old man. “The church has no use for violent emperors. You sent for me, not the other way around! The church is eternal, emperors are ephemeral.”

“I am eternal!” cried the Emperor.

“You are transitory,” said the old man, “like a comet. You shine too brilliantly! Your light consumes itself as it shines! You were born from an earthly mother’s womb!”

Then the old man appeared to morph into his mother. The Emperor fell to his knees and buried his head in her lap. “Nabulio!” she said to him. She wore the flowing red vestments of the Holy Father, and she murmured: “I forgive you everything! I forgive you everything! Nabulio, most beloved of my children!”

He rose, for it was striking midnight from the towers of the sleeping city.

The tower struck midnight with deep, reverberating tones. They were answered by the delicate silver bell of the little mantelpiece clock. “Light!” the Emperor ordered. He rose quickly. He stood before the mirror, fixed his hair and called: “My uniform! My sword! My hat!”

The servant dressed him. The Emperor stood there before the mirror, staring intently at his face, lifting his feet and legs out of habit, almost involuntarily and watching as he was transformed. The reflection of his white breeches, which had been freshly chalked, was quite dazzling, and his boots gleamed, themselves black mirrors. His sash shimmered. The handle of his sword glistened. “Is this coat really blue?” he asked. He had always had difficulty in distinguishing one color from another and at that moment he was not actually talking of the coat or its color but of the fact that he was often incapable of distinguishing red from green. One day in a meadow, and he could no longer remember exactly when or where, he had seen blood flowing from a dead man’s wound on to the green grass, and it had looked like the blood had assumed the color of the grass. It startled him. He had long since forgotten this trivial incident, which only now came back to him as he was putting on the coat.

“Blue?” he asked.

“Your Majesty’s coat is green,” the servant said.

The Emperor looked closely in the mirror. For a few seconds, as he studied himself, he had the feeling he was not actually alive, that everything was make believe, now and always. Often had he watched his friend, the actor Talma, looking in the mirror before one of his great scenes. The real Emperor Napoleon was hidden deep within the most remote corner of his heart. The real Emperor never saw the light of day. Everything in the world was no more than a game. It was meaningless theatre and he himself, the Emperor Napoleon, was now performing the role of the Emperor Napoleon giving himself up to enemy hands. That was why he had rejected his civilian clothes and official uniform: so he could surrender to the enemy looking just like the hundreds of thousands of portraits by which he was known throughout the entire world. “Between green and blue,” said the Emperor, as if speaking to his reflection, “I have never been able to make a precise distinction.” The servant shuddered. He had never heard the Emperor speak in such a manner. “And once,” continued the Emperor, “I even believed that human blood was not actually red.”

“Yes, your Majesty,” said the servant, trembling with embarrassment.

There were loud voices outside, under the window. The baggage of the Emperor and his retinue was being loaded down below. He went to the window and stood motionless, as he looked out. “My friend,” he said after a long while, finally turning around, “this is my last night in France.”

“If that is the case, then it will be my last night too,” stammered the servant.

“Come here!” said the Emperor. “Have a good look at it!” The servant went up to him. They stood next to each other at the window for a long time, silent and still.

The sky grew lighter and a silver haze hovered over the sea. The wind picked up and the windows rattled faintly.

“It’s time!” said the Emperor. “Let’s go!”

They went. The Emperor led the way with a firm stride, head held high, in his dazzling white breeches and bright, shiny boots, his spurs clinking faintly with each step. The island fishermen were already awake, standing quietly in front of their huts, heads bare. The gravel crunched under the steps of the Emperor and his companions. All was still except for the sound of the men’s feet, the answer of the gravel, and the occasional shriek of a gull. The boat was already waiting with swelling sails. The Emperor climbed aboard. He didn’t look back.

There was a light breeze. Up ahead was the Bellerophon.

When the sloop arrived for the Emperor, the sun was emerging from the sea at his right, red and mighty, rising slowly above the clouds. The dense flock of white gulls rose from the jetty and fluttered in squawking, energetic swarms over the boat.

Nothing could be heard save for the shrieking of the seagulls and the faint splash of water upon the hull. Suddenly the sailors cried: “Long live the Emperor!” They tossed their caps into the air and shouted: “Long live the Emperor!” The startled gulls scattered.

This is the last time, thought the Emperor, that I will hear that cry. Until that moment he had still been hoping that he was only acting, as during the night before the mirror; that he was not really the Emperor Napoleon but rather an actor playing him. The sailors, however, who had shouted: “Long live the Emperor!” — they had not been acting. No, this was not a scene! He was the Emperor going to his actual death, and the sailors were truly shouting with full force: “Long live the Emperor!”

As he boarded the Bellerophon he felt that tears were coming. But he had to keep them from being seen. The Emperor Napoleon must not cry. “My field glasses!” he commanded. They were handed to him. Through these glasses he had observed many battlefields, spotted many an enemy, and determined their plans. He brought them quickly to his eyes. His hot tears ran down into the black cavities, instantly clouding the glass, while he pretended to be searching the sea. He turned to the right and the left and all who saw him believed he was scanning the sea or studying the coast. But he could see nothing through the glass, nothing at all — he only felt his hot tears, each of which seemed to him as vast as an ocean. He pressed the glasses tightly against his eye sockets and lowered his head so that his hat shaded his face. He strained mightily to hold back tears. He lowered the glasses. Now he could see the coast of France, which appeared bold and serene in outline, so pleasant and delightful. “Back,” he said very softly — and realized that he could no longer give orders to anyone. The sun’s silver gleam played upon the millions of tiny ripples on the calm surface of the sea. The ocean was wide, wider than all his battlefields. It was even wider than the battlefield at Waterloo. He now envisioned all his battlefields stretching out, one next to another, over the endless mirror of the sea — and many dead also, with blood flowing from their open wounds. The sea was green, like a meadow, a meadow strewn with dead, including a little drummer in the foreground, a boy whose face was covered with a red handkerchief, the same one the Emperor had once given out to all soldiers in his army and on which all his battlefields were noted.

The ship’s captain approached. When he was three steps away from the Emperor, he stopped and saluted.

“I place myself under the protection of your Prince and your laws,” said Napoleon. But as he spoke these words he was thinking of other words:

“I surrender as your prisoner!”

XIII

The sailors presented their weapons. Oh! Their manner was so different from that of the French soldiers, the men of France! They were English soldiers, and they had defeated the Emperor, but they did not know their exercises! And there suddenly stirred within the Emperor the old, basic, childlike soldier’s desire to show these men how to present a weapon. At that moment he forgot that he was a great, a great and defeated, the greatest of all defeated Emperors; he became a petty drill sergeant instructing the men in French exercises. Taking a gun from one of the sailors in the perfectly aligned row, he showed him how one presented weapons in the French Army. “Like so, my son!” he said. “This is how we present arms!” As he demonstrated the simple motion, he was thinking of one, of any, of the nameless soldiers of his great army, and he could hear the immortal tune of the “Marseillaise,” which his military bands used to play as arms were presented.

He gave the sailor’s weapon back and let the captain lead him to the cabin that they had prepared for him. As he entered, he said: “Leave me be!” in such a loud and severe voice that the astonished captain and his retinue froze up for a moment before heading back to the door. The Emperor remained alone and studied his cabin. It was spacious with two round windows, a room with two eyes, the two eyes of a sentry. Through these eyes, the Emperor thought, I shall be watched for days, for weeks, by the sea, by the enemy sea. It has forever been my enemy! What an enemy! It will not bury me or consume me! It will transport me to a shore even more hostile than itself!

At that moment the little clock on the table began to strike eight o’clock, and hardly had its eight melancholy tones faded when from within came the tune of the “Marseillaise,” a very thin, very faint, practically trembling version of the “Marseillaise.” It was as if the little clock were whispering the mightiest and manliest of all the world’s melodies. Thin and faltering, it came from deep within the instrument, as if the melody were mourning itself, as if it were coming from the hereafter, a dead “Marseillaise” that kept on playing. Nonetheless, as he listened, the Emperor could hear a mighty chorus of hundreds of thousands of throats mixed with cries of “Long live the Emperor!” — the mighty cry of hundreds of thousands of living hearts, the song of the French, the song of battle, and the song of freedom. Whoever sang it alone became a comrade to millions, and whoever sang it with others became like them, a brother to millions. It was the song of the humble and the proud. It was the song of life and death. The people of France, the Emperor’s people, sang it on their way to his battles, during his battles, and while returning home from his battles. Even defeats were transformed into victories by the song. It also conquered the dead and invigorated the living. It was the song of the Emperor, as the violet was his flower and the bee was his creature.

When he heard the thin, timid tones coming from the clock, he was startled at first and froze in place. Finally he brought his hands to his face and wanted to weep, but the tears would not come. Long after the music box had stopped playing, he remained in the middle of the cabin, watched by the two round dead window-eyes. With a choked-up voice, he called to his servant, whom he knew was just outside the door. “Marchand,” he cried, “Stop the clock! I cannot listen to the ‘Marseillaise’ any longer.”

“Your Majesty,” said the servant, “I don’t hear the Marseillaise.’”

“But I hear it,” said the Emperor in a low voice, “I hear it. Be still, Marchand! Listen! Then you will hear it!”

And although the clock has long been silent and although nothing could be heard save the gentle splashing of the waves against the sides of the Bellerophon, Marchand pretended to listen and after a while, he said:

“Yes, sir, Your Majesty, that’s the “Marseillaise.’”

And he went to the little clock, fiddled with it a little and then reported:

“Your Majesty, it plays no more!”

At that moment a seagull flapped against the window. “Open!” the Emperor ordered.

The servant opened one of the round windows. The Emperor stood before it, looking out. He saw only a narrow silver strip of the French coast.