The Hundred Days E-Book

Joseph Roth

• Herausgeber: Peter Owen Publishers
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 348

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

'This is not perhaps the real Napoleon, but it's certainly a remarkable creation that leaps off the page.' - Jack Kerridge, The Sunday Telegraph In The Hundred Days, Joseph Roth provides a poignant look at Napoleon's seemingly triumphant return to Paris from exile in March 1815. The story of Napoleon's last grasp at glory is framed both through the eyes of the Emperor himself and an infatuated young imperial laundress named Angelina Pietri. Before long, one hundred days have elapsed and war and truth have crushed the lofty dreams of both Napoleon and little Angelina. Originally published in 1935, and out of print in English for seventy years, The Hundred Days achieves Roth's aim of sending the legendary Napoleon Bonaparte out of the lofty clouds and crashing down to earth.

Leseprobe

‘In The Hundred Days, Joseph Roth’s 1935 novel about the run-up to Waterloo, [Napoleon] is a fascinating mixture of vanity, genius and self-doubt … a remarkable creation that leaps off the page.’ – Sunday Telegraph

‘A novelist whose novels deserve a wide readership’ – Sunday Times

‘A concise, powerful writer who brilliantly evoked the social, political and intellectual turmoil of his era’ – Publishers Weekly

THE HUNDRED DAYS

In Joseph Roth’s The Hundred Days, the story of Napoleon’s last snatch at glory is framed both through the eyes of Bonaparte himself and those of his long-infatuated Corsican laundress, Angelina – with rather more said by her about the Emperor’s dirty handkerchiefs than the Duke of Wellington. The novel provides an arch and yet moving look at Napoleon’s seemingly triumphant return to Paris from exile in March 1815. Before one hundred days have elapsed, however, fate and war have squashed Napoleon’s ambitions and shattered the life of his laundress.

Out of print in English for seventy years, The Hundred Days is a unique and unforgettable period piece, in which Napoleon is tossed from Olympian heights to come crashing down to earth as a mere mortal, leaving a young devotee trailing in his wake.

JOSEPH ROTH was born in Brody, Galicia – then part of Austria-Hungary and now in the Ukraine – in 1894. He served in the Austrian Army between 1916 and 1918 and worked as a journalist from 1923 to 1932 in Berlin and Vienna. When the Nazis came to power in 1933 he emigrated to Paris, where he drank himself into an early grave in 1939.

Roth also wrote The Antichrist, Weights and Measures, Flight Without End and The Silent Prophet, which have also been published by Peter Owen, as well as The Radetzky March, String of Pearls and The Legend of the Holy Drinker.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

In an interview for a French newspaper, Joseph Roth admitted that while writing his novels he was ‘always haunted by a musical theme’. His writing style was all about rhythm. ‘For me,’ he claimed, ‘a good translation is that which renders the rhythm of my language. For me, a good translation is neither about the anecdotal contents nor the sentimental contents, it is about the rhythm.’ I have tried my best to preserve the rhythm of Roth’s writing, being mindful of how the differences between German and English syntax occasionally make it a challenge to achieve the precise effect towards which Roth was striving. Roth’s manuscript featured heavy usage of exclamation marks. I have eliminated some of the most flagrantly unnecessary, but kept the great majority to be true to the spirit of the original, which is quite emphatic by virtue of Napoleon’s larger-than-life personality.

I should like to thank the wonderful Peter Owen and Antonia Owen for their belief in this important project, as well as Simon Smith, my excellent editor. Thanks also to the Leo Baeck Institute – the Joseph Roth Collection there is invaluable to scholars – and in particular the resources pertaining to Die Hundert Tage, the typescript manuscript (AR 1764; series 2, subseries 1, box 1, folder 36) and contemporaneous reviews (AR 1764; series 2, subseries 4, box 2, folder 82).

Richard Panchyk

2011

INTRODUCTION

Joseph Roth’s (1894–1939) prodigious output included numerous novels, novellas, short stories and newspaper articles in the space of only sixteen years (between 1923 and 1939). While much of his fascinating œuvre has been made available to the English-speaking world in recent times, The Hundred Days has remained out of print in English for seventy years. With the publication of The Hundred Days by Peter Owen, all of Roth’s completed novels are now available in English (this does not count Perlefter: Die Geschichte eines Burger, a never-completed novel fragment published in German in 1978).

Born Moses Joseph Roth of Jewish parentage in the town of Brody, Galicia (present-day Ukraine), about fifty-four miles north-east of present-day Lviv (then called Lemberg), Roth was a product of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After service in the Austrian Army during the First World War he moved to Berlin in 1920. After Hitler came to power in early 1933, Roth fled Germany permanently, spending the rest of his life living in hotels in France and other parts of Western Europe.

The setting for the majority of Roth’s novels is Eastern Europe from the turn of the twentieth century to the 1920s, and so The Hundred Days (Die Hundert Tage; 1935) is a departure from the usual Roth formula, in both the time period and the place in which it is set. Written immediately after The Antichrist (Der Antichrist; 1934), Roth’s journalistic and autobiographical novel about the dangers of modern civilization in the early 1930s, The Hundred Days takes place further west (France) and in a much earlier era (1815) than the rest of his works. The novel is divided into four books, two told from Napoleon’s perspective and two from the vantage point of the diminutive, freckled imperial laundress Angelina Pietri, who happens to be quite smitten with the Emperor.

So why did this Austrian writer, who was clearly fascinated by the dynamics surrounding the events leading up to and immediately following the First World War, including the collapse of the Austrian Empire and the rise of communism and the Weimar Republic, choose to write about Napoleon? In a letter to his French translator, Blanche Gidon (whose translation of this book Le Roman des Cent-Jours [The Novel of the Hundred Days] was published in 1937 by Éditions Bernard Grasset in Paris), Roth explained the motivation behind writing the book. He told her, with some degree of excitement, that he wished to chronicle the transformation of Napoleon from a god to man over the course of the hundred-day period of his return to power from exile on Elba in the spring of 1815. ‘I would like to make a humble man out of a grand one,’ he wrote in November 1934. He was interested in the idea of the great Napoleon as someone who has, for the first time in his life, become truly small. ‘This is what attracts me.’

Besides the attraction of the topic itself, Roth was likely happy for the chance to set one of his novels in Paris. His love affair with the city began in 1925, when he was assigned to Paris as a foreign correspondent for the Frankfurter Zeitung. Flight Without End (1927) is partly set in Paris, and the city also plays a role in his follow-up to The Hundred Days, Confession of a Murderer. His collected essays written while in France have been published as Report from a Parisian Paradise. Roth said in a mid-1930s interview: ‘The only thing I love after my “lost Vienna” is Paris. I love my Latin Quarter, my Hotel Foyot …’

At the time of its first English-language publication, the critics’ reception of The Hundred Days was lukewarm. The Daily Independent called Roth’s Napoleon ‘much too benevolent’ but in the end proclaimed the book was still ‘a fine piece of work’. The New Statesman and Nation cited ‘long passages of literary dithyramb’ and declared that The Hundred Days was a ‘prose-poem dressed as a novel’. The Sunday Times said it lacked realism, while the Observer called Roth’s attempt at dealing with the subject matter ‘an impossible task’ and ‘an inevitable failure’. On the other hand, The Gloucester Journal called it ‘enlightening’ and ‘moving’. Across the Atlantic, while acknowledging Roth’s fine abilities as a writer, the New York Times claimed the story lacked reality, charm, passion and warmth. Evidence indicates that Roth himself may have been disappointed in the way his book turned out. Perhaps the initial stigma attached to it is in part the reason why The Hundred Days has remained unavailable in English for so long.

But, like The Antichrist, the other Roth work that had until recently remained out of print in English and had mixed critical reviews at the time of its debut, The Hundred Days comes across differently today than it might have in the mid-1930s, during a turbulent time in world history when Hitler was in power. At the time of its original publication readers may not have been so receptive to a pathos-filled story about a dictator’s fall from power, a story that overlooks some of the key players (the Duke of Wellington receives barely a mention) and historical realities in favour of a focus on the Emperor’s brooding internal transformation. For those expecting a more historical novel, The Hundred Days might be seen as overwrought and highly internalized. Even the US title of the original translation, The Ballad of the Hundred Days, seems cloying (in Britain it was published as The Story of the Hundred Days).

As is usual in his work, Roth expertly employs atmospheric details to convey mood. The sombre and stultifying library where the Emperor says farewell to his mother; the imperial room where Angelina waits, with its heavy green curtain; the cramped flat of the cobbler Jan Wokurka; the many shimmering dawns and starlit evenings – these are practically characters in themselves, invested with personality and emotional weight. Roth admitted that he was often ‘haunted by a place, by an atmosphere’, and this is clearly reflected in his writing.

Roth expends great effort trying to convince the reader of Napoleon’s constantly fluctuating mental state over the course of his final days in power. In the two sections of The Hundred Days told from the Emperor’s perspective, Napoleon at turns loves and despises the French people, and throughout the book has similarly (and frequently) changing attitudes towards his family, his ministers, power, war, God and the Church and life in general. ‘I no longer believe in all in which I used to have faith – in force, might and success,’ he tells his brother when he is ready to abdicate. Yet, once he discovers that the enemy has arrived at Paris he dictates a letter to his adjutant, to be dispatched at once: ‘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 country.’ Moments later, however, the Emperor is filled with unhappiness and regret at the letter he has just dictated.

Both Napoleon and Angelina struggle to find religion, with limited success. They, like Roth characters in other novels, are prone to believe more generally in fate (in this case represented by the stars in the heavens and the fortune-telling cards of Angelina’s aunt) than they are in God and the Church specifically. This confusion over religion comes at a time when Roth himself was conflicted, leaning heavily towards the Catholic Church yet clearly remaining aware of his essential Jewishness.

The one being worshipped in The Hundred Days is not God but Napoleon himself. The Emperor is buffeted by cries of ‘Long live the Emperor!’ throughout the book (in fact, the phrase appears no less than fifty-two times), varying in their veracity and meaning depending on the circumstances of the scene.

Despite the noise of those frenzied cries of devotion, it is often the moments of silence that carry the most emotional weight. One of the most poignant scenes in The Hundred Days takes place on the battlefield at Waterloo, when the Emperor’s soldiers are flying silently past him in retreat, no longer offering any cries of solidarity, passing as if scattering ghosts of the dead soldiers.

If Roth’s novel were told strictly from Napoleon’s viewpoint it would have been a far less interesting book. Although being inside the Emperor’s head provides an informative look at what he might have been going through emotionally, remaining there for the entire book would perhaps have been overwhelming. The introduction of Angelina Pietri into the story provides a welcome richness and multi-dimensional fullness to the tale. Young Angelina comes to France from her native Corsica and immediately goes to stay with her aunt, who is the First Laundress (and occasional fortune-telling card-reader for the Emperor) at the imperial palace. Over the course of several years and a few fleeting encounters with the Emperor, Angelina’s devotion to him does not waver. In fact, her feelings can be summed by one sentence: ‘Her heart commanded her to remain close to his gracious presence, lowly and ignored as she was.’ She eventually comes to realize that much of her life has been lived within the Emperor’s great shadow, and all the major events – including her unpleasant relationship with a colossal sergeant-major, the birth of a son and his eventual death on the Emperor’s battlefield – have in one way or another been connected to the Emperor. It seems the powerful Napoleon and the powerless Angelina are both caught up in their own misfortune, unable to rend themselves from the relentless tug of fate.

The most sympathetic character in The Hundred Days is neither Napoleon nor Angelina but the kindly and patient one-legged Polish cobbler Anton Wokurka, with whom Angelina takes up residence once the Emperor has been exiled in 1814 and her aunt flees the palace. Wokurka (who is referred to as both Jan and Anton in the German version) was originally slated to play a much more central role in the book; among Roth’s manuscripts was a typed, seven-page unpublished preface to The Hundred Days in which Roth introduces the Anton Wokurka character as a friend of his grandfather’s. Roth explains that he met this cobbler, a good twenty years older than Roth’s grandfather (who was by then already seventy-three years old) as a young boy while visiting his grandfather’s village on holiday. The white-bearded, bald-headed, pipe-smoking Wokurka, a veteran of Napoleon’s great campaigns who lost a leg in service to the Emperor, lived in a room the walls of which were decorated with pictures of the Emperor and his battles and palaces as well as a framed commendation from days of yore. Every year young Roth was sure to spend time with this interesting old man while visiting his grandfather. Once the Roths’ vacation was over Wokurka would say: ‘Good-bye. See you in a year, punctually!’ On one particular visit Wokurka asks Roth if he has learned much about Napoleon. Roth answers that he has and that the storybooks he has read either depict Napoleon as very evil or very noble. ‘I think they are all lies,’ says Roth. Wokurka says that Roth is right and that if the boy is patient he will recount for the him the true story of Napoleon’s one hundred days. ‘I knew the Emperor … and if you are curious, I can tell you an instructive story … but I will need a long time.’ So Roth visits Wokurka every morning at 9 a.m. over the course of four days. Thus Wokurka tells Roth the tale of the Emperor’s last days in power, as the boy listens, entranced: ‘There sat Wokurka, a soldier of the Emperor, and it was as if he was already speaking from the grave. It was as if I myself sat in the crypt in which Wokurka lay buried …’ Years later the sound of Wokurka’s voice still rings in Roth’s head, and he realizes he should share the Emperor’s tale with the world, despite feeling woefully inadequate to recapture the great storytelling of the ‘splendid’ Wokurka.

Perhaps Roth abandoned this interesting premise when he realized that using Wokurka’s recollections as a narrative device would restrict his ability to delve deep enough into the Emperor’s psyche. None the less, Wokurka was still given an important role in the book and remains crucial to the book’s poignant closing scene.

In 1934 and 1935, the period during which he was writing The Hundred Days, Roth was consumed by work, sometimes even writing for twelve or fourteen hours a day. ‘It [writing] is truly my Waterloo,’ he explained in February 1935, referring to himself as ‘old and miserable Joseph Roth’. He worried constantly about his precarious financial situation; when he would be paid and how much was he owed. Although several of his books met with substantial critical and commercial success, he was nevertheless in need of money. He complained that the Nazis had taken 30,000 marks of his after he left in 1933. Whatever level of comfort and success he had achieved during the German years, by 1934 Roth was desperate for money. He described himself in one letter as depressed, with ‘mountains of chagrin’ and in another letter said: ‘I work in a great anguish, a true panic.’ Sick and full of anguish over everything from financial troubles to the decline of civilization, the Roth of The Hundred Days was just forty years old, only four years away from a very premature and alcohol-induced death. The Hundred Days is a worthy and fascinating book on a subject far different from any of Roth’s other novels.

BOOK ONE

THE RETURN OF THE GREAT EMPEROR

I

The sun emerged from the clouds, bloody-red, tiny and irritable, but was quickly swallowed up again into the cold grey of the morning. A sullen day was breaking. It was 20 March, a mere day before the start of spring. One could see no sign of this. It rained and stormed across the whole land, and the people shivered.

The weather in Paris had been stormy since the previous evening. The birds fell silent after a quick morning greeting. Cold and spiteful wisps of mist rose insidiously from the cracks between the cobbles, moistening anew the stones that had just been blown dry by the morning wind. The mist lingered about the willows and chestnuts in the parks and hovered along the edges of the avenues, causing the nascent tree buds to tremble, chasing clearly visible shivers along the damp backs of the patient livery horses and forcing down to ground level the industrious morning smoke that was here and there attempting to rise from chimneys. The streets smelled of fire, mist and rain, of damp clothes, of lurking snow clouds and temporarily averted hail, of unfriendly winds, soaked leather and foul sewers.

Despite this, the citizens of Paris did not remain in their homes. They began to gather in the streets at an early hour. They assembled themselves before the walls on to which broadsides had been affixed. These papers carried the farewell message of the King of France. Barely legible, they looked tear-soaked, for the night’s rain had smeared the freshly inked letters and in places also dissolved the glue with which they were adhered to the stone. From time to time, a stormy gust of wind would blow a sheet completely off the wall and deposit it into the black mud of the street. These farewell words of the King of France met an ignoble fate, being ground into the muck of the road under the wheels of wagons, under the hooves of horses and under the indifferent feet of pedestrians.

Many of the loyalists regarded these sheets with a wistful devotion. The heavens themselves seemed unfavourably disposed to him. Gales and rains endeavoured with zeal to obliterate his farewell message. Amid wind and rain, he had departed his palace and residence on the previous evening. ‘Do not make my heart heavy, my children!’ he had said when they got on their knees and begged him to stay. He could not stay; the heavens were against him … everyone could see this.

He was a good king. Few loved him, but many in the country liked him. He did not have a kind heart, but he was royal. He was old, portly, slow, peaceable and proud. He had known the misfortune of homelessness, for he had grown old in exile. Like every unfortunate, he did not trust anyone. He loved moderation, peace and quiet. He was lonely and aloof – for true kings are all lonely and aloof. He was poor and old, portly and slow, dignified, deliberate and unhappy. Few loved him, but there were many in the land who liked him.

The old King was fleeing a menacing shadow – the shadow of the mighty Emperor Napoleon, who had for the last twenty days been on the march towards the capital. The Emperor cast his shadow before him, and it was a ponderous one. He cast it over France and over practically the entire world. He was known throughout France and the entire earth. His Majesty was not derived through birth. Power was his majesty. His crown was a conquest and a capture, not an inheritance. He came from an unknown family. He even brought glory to his nameless ancestors. He had conferred splendour upon them instead of gaining it through them, as was the case for those who were born emperors and kings. Thus he was equally related to all the nameless masses as he was to old-fashioned majesty. By exalting himself he ennobled, crowned and exalted each and every one of the nameless masses, and they loved him for that. For many years he had terrorized, besieged and reined in the great ones of this earth, and that was the reason the commoners saw him as their avenger and accepted him as their lord. They loved him because he seemed to be one of them – and because he was none the less greater than them. He was an encouraging example to them.

The Emperor’s name was known across the world – but few actually knew anything about him. For, like a true king, he was also lonely. He was loved and hated, feared and venerated, but seldom understood. People could only hate him or love him; fear him, or worship him as a god. He was human.

He knew hate, love, fear and veneration. He was strong and weak, daring and despondent, loyal and treacherous, passionate and cold, arrogant and simple, proud and humble, powerful and pitiable, trusting and suspicious.

He promised the people liberty and dignity – but whoever entered into his service surrendered their freedom and gave themselves completely to him. He held the people and the nations in low regard, yet none the less he courted their favour. He despised those who were born kings but desired their friendship and recognition. He believed in God yet did not fear Him. He was familiar with death but did not want to die. He placed little value upon life yet wished to enjoy it. He had no use for love but wanted to have women. He did not believe in loyalty and friendship yet searched tirelessly for friends. He scorned the world but wanted to conquer it anyway. He placed no trust in men until they were prepared to die for him – thus he made them into soldiers. So that he might be certain of their affection, he taught them to obey him. In order for him to be certain of them, they had to die. He wished to bring happiness to the world, and he became its plague. Yet he was loved even for his weak ways. For when he showed himself to be weak, the people realized he was one of their own kind, and they loved him because they felt a connection to him. And when he showed himself to be strong, they also loved him for that very reason, because he seemed not to be one of them. Those who did not love him hated him or feared him. He was both firm and fickle, true and treacherous, bold and shy, exalted and modest.

And now he was standing at the gates of Paris.

The orders that the King had introduced were discarded, in some instances out of fear and in others out of elation.

The colours of the King and his royal house had been white. Those who had acknowledged him wore white bows on their jackets.

But, as if by accident, hundreds had suddenly lost their white bows. Now they lay, rejected and disgraced butterflies, in the black muck of the streets.

The flower of the King and his royal house had been the virginally pure lily. Now, hundreds of lilies, of silk and cloth, lay discarded, disowned and disgraced in the black muck of the streets.

The colours of the approaching Emperor, however, were blue, white and red; blue as the sky and the distant future; white as the snow and death; and red as blood and freedom.

Suddenly, thousands of people appeared in the streets of the city wearing blue-white-red bows in their buttonholes and on their hats.

And instead of the proud, virginal lily, they wore the most unassuming of all flowers, the violet.

The violet is a humble and sturdy flower. It embodies the virtues of the anonymous masses. Nearly unrecognized, it blooms in the shadows of imposing trees, and with a modest yet dignified precocity it is the first of all the flowers to greet the spring. And its dark-blue sheen is equally reminiscent of the morning mist before daybreak and the evening mist before nightfall. It was the Emperor’s flower. He was known as the ‘Father of the Violet’.

Thousands of people could be seen streaming from the out-skirts of Paris towards the centre of the city, towards the palace, all of them adorned with violets. It was one day before the start of spring, an unfriendly day, a sullen welcome for spring. The violet, however, the bravest of all flowers, was already blooming in the woods outside the gates of Paris. It was as though these people from the suburbs were carrying the spirit of spring into the city of stone, towards the palace of stone. The freshly plucked bouquets of violets shone a radiant blue at the ends of the sticks held aloft by the men, between the warm and swelling breasts of the women, on the hats and caps that were being waved high in the air, in the joyful hands of the workers and craftsmen, on the swords of the officers, on the drums of the old percussionists and the silver cornets of the old trumpeters. At the front of some of the groups marched the drummers of the old Imperial Army. They rapped out old battle melodies on their old calfskin drums, let their drumsticks fly through the air and caught them again, like slender homing pigeons, in fatherly hands held open in welcome. Heading up other groups, or contained within their midst, marched the ancient trumpeters of the old army, who from time to time set their instruments upon their lips and blew the old battle calls of the Emperor, the simple, melancholy calls to death and triumph, each of which reminded a soldier of his own pledge to die for the Emperor and also of the last sigh of a beloved wife before he left her to lie down for the Emperor. In the midst of all the people, raised upon shoulders, were the Emperor’s old officers. They swayed, or rather were swayed, above the surging heads of the crowd like living, human banners. They had their swords drawn. On the sword tips fluttered their hats, like little black flags decorated with the tricoloured cockades of the Emperor and the people of France. And from time to time, as if compelled to release the oppressive longing that had quickly built up in their hearts once again, the men and women cried out: ‘Long live France! Long live the Emperor! Long live the people! Long live the Father of the Violet! Long live liberty! Long live the Emperor!’ And once more: ‘Long live the Emperor!’ Often, some enthusiast from within the centre of the crowd would begin to sing. He sang the old songs of the old soldiers, from battles of days past, the songs that celebrate man’s farewell to life, his prayer before death, the sung confession of the soldier lacking the time for final exoneration. They were songs proclaiming love of both life and death. They were tunes in which one could hear under-tones of marching regiments and clattering muskets. Suddenly someone struck up a song that had not been heard for a long time, the ‘Marseillaise’ – and all the many thousands joined in singing it. It was the song of the French people. It was the song of liberty and duty. It was the song of the motherland and of the whole world. It was the song of the Emperor just as the violet was his flower, as the eagle was his bird, as white, blue and red were his colours. It glorified victory and even cast its sheen upon lost battles. It gave voice to the spirit of triumph and its brother death. Within it was both despair and reassurance. Anyone who sang the ‘Marseillaise’ to himself joined the powerful community and fellowship of the many whose song it was. And anyone who sang it in the company of many others could feel his own loneliness in spite of the crowd. For the ‘Marseillaise’ proclaimed both victory and defeat, communion with the world and the isolation of spirit, man’s deceptive might and actual powerlessness. It was the song of life and the song of death. It was the song of the French people.

They sang it on the day that the Emperor Napoleon returned home.

II

Many of his old friends hurried to meet him even as he was still on his way home. Others prepared to greet him in the city. The King’s white banners had been hastily removed from the tower of the city hall, already replaced by the fluttering blue, white and red of the Emperor. On the walls, which even that same morning had still carried the King’s farewell message, there were now posted new broadsides, no longer rain-soaked and tear-stained, but clear, legible, clean and dry. At their tops, mighty and steadfast, soared the imperial eagle, spreading its strong, black wings in protection of the neat black type, as if he himself had dropped them, letter by letter, from his threatening yet eloquent beak. It was the Emperor’s manifesto. Once again the Parisians gathered at these same walls, and in each group read, in a loud voice, the Emperor’s words. They had a different tone from the King’s wistful farewell. The Emperor’s words were polished and powerful and carried the roll of drums, the clarion call of trumpets and the stormy melody of the ‘Marseillaise’. And it seemed as if the voice of each reader of the Emperor’s words was transformed into the voice of the Emperor himself. Yes, he who had not yet arrived was already speaking to the people of Paris through ten thousand heralds sent on ahead. Soon, the very broadsides themselves seemed to be speaking from the walls. The printed words had voices, the letters trumpeted their message, and above them the mighty yet peacefully hovering eagle seemed to stir his wings. The Emperor was coming. His voice was already speaking from all the walls.

His old friends, the old dignitaries and their wives, hurried to the palace. The generals and ministers put on their old uniforms, pinned on their imperial decorations and viewed themselves in the mirror before leaving their homes, feeling that they had only recently been revived. Even more elated were the ladies of the imperial court, as they once more donned their old clothes. They were accustomed to viewing their youth as a thing of the past, their beauty as faded, their glory as lost. Now, however, as they put on their clothes, the symbols of their youth and their triumphant glory, they could actually believe that time had stood still since the Emperor’s departure. Time, woman’s enemy, had been halted in its track; the rolling hours, the creeping weeks, the murderously slow and boring months, had been only a bad dream. Their mirrors lied no more. Once again, they revealed the true images of youth. And with victorious steps, on feet more joyously winged than those of youth – for their feet were revived and had awakened to a second youth – the ladies entered their carriages and headed towards the palace amid cheers from the thronging, waiting crowds.

They waited in the gardens before the palace, clamouring at the gates. In every arriving minister and general they saw another of the Emperor’s emissaries. Besides these exalted persons, there came also the lesser staff of the Emperor – the old cooks and coachmen and bakers and laundresses, grooms and riding-masters, tailors and cobblers, masons and upholsterers, lackeys and maids. And they began to prepare the palace for the Emperor so he would find it just as he had left it, with no reminders of the King who had fled. The exalted ladies and gentlemen joined the lowly servants in this work. In fact, the ladies of the imperial court worked even more zealously than the servants. Disregarding their dignity and the damage to their delicate clothing or their carefully cultivated fingernails, they scratched, clawed and peeled from the walls the tapestries and the white lilies of the King with vindictiveness, fury, impatience and enthusiasm. Under the King’s tapestries were the old and familiar symbols of the Emperor – countless golden bees with widespread, glassy and delicately veined little wings and black-striped hind ends, imperial insects, industrious manufacturers of sweetness. Soldiers carried in the imperial eagles of shiny, golden brass and placed them in every corner, so that at the very moment of his arrival, the Emperor would know that his soldiers were awaiting him – even those who had not been able to be at his side upon his entrance.

In the meantime, night was falling, and the Emperor had still not arrived. The lanterns in front of the palace were lit. Streetlamps at every corner flared. They battled against fog, dampness and the wind.

The people waited and waited. Finally, they heard the orderly trot of military horses’ hooves. They knew it was the Thirteenth Dragoons. At the head of the squadron rode the Colonel, sabre shining a narrow flash in the gloom of the night. The Colonel cried: ‘Make way for the Emperor!’ As he sat high upon his chestnut steed, which was barely visible in the darkness, his wide, pale face with its great black moustache, over the heads of the thronging crowd, unsheathed weapon in his raised hand, repeating from time to time his cry ‘Make way for the Emperor!’ and occasionally lit by the yellowish glint of the flickering streetlamps, he reminded the crowd of the militant and supposedly cruel guardian angel that was alleged to personally accompany the Emperor, for it seemed to the people that the Emperor, at this hour, was issuing orders even to his own guardian angel …

Soon his dragoon-escorted coach came into view, the rumble of its hurried wheels inaudible over the trampling of the horses’ hooves.

It stopped at the palace.

As the Emperor left the carriage, many pale, open hands reached for him. At that moment, entranced by the imploring hands, he lost his will and consciousness. These loving white hands that stretched towards him seemed to him more terrible than if they had belonged to armed enemies. Each hand was like a loving, yearning pale face. The love that streamed towards the Emperor from these bright, outstretched hands was like an intense and dangerous plea. What were the hands demanding? What did they want from him? These hands were praying, demanding and compelling all at once; hands raised as if to the gods.

He shut his eyes and could feel the hands lifting him and carrying him along on unsteady shoulders up the palace steps. He heard the familiar voice of his friend General Lavalette: ‘It is you! It’s you! It’s you – my Emperor!’ From the voice and the breath on his face he realized that his friend was in front of him, climbing the steps backwards. The Emperor opened his eyes – and saw the open arms of his friend Lavalette and the white silhouette of his face.

This startled him, so he closed his eyes again. As if sleeping or unconscious, he was carried, led and supported along to his old room. Both frightened and happy, he seated himself at his writing table with a fearful joy in his heart.

He saw some of his old friends in the room as if through a fog. From the direction of the street, on the other side of the shut windows, he heard the boisterous shouts of the people, the whinnying of horses, the clinking of weapons, the high-pitched ring of spurs and, from the hall behind the high white door opposite his seat, the murmuring and whispering of many voices; from time to time he seemed to recognize one of them. He was aware of everything that was going on; it seemed clear and immediate yet vague and distant, and all of it instilled in him both happiness and a feeling of awe. He felt that he was finally home and was at the same time being rescued from some kind of storm. Slowly he forced himself to pay attention; he commanded his eyes to notice and his ears to listen. He sat, perfectly still, at the writing table. The cries from just outside the windows were intended for him alone. It was for his sake that so many voices were murmuring and whispering in the hall beyond the closed door. Suddenly it seemed to him that he was looking at all of his countless thousands of friends throughout the entire great land of France, who were standing and waiting for him. Throughout the whole country millions cried, as hundreds were doing here: ‘Long live the Emperor!’ In all the rooms of the palace they were whispering, chattering and talking about him. He would have enjoyed allowing himself some leisure to think about himself from a stranger’s perspective. But, behind his back, he could hear the ruthlessly steady ticking of the clock on the mantel. Time was passing; the clock began to strike the hour in a thin and sorrowful tone. It was eleven, one hour before midnight. The Emperor stood up.

He approached the window. From all the towers of the city the bells chimed the eleventh hour. He loved the bells. He had loved them since childhood. He had little regard for churches and stood at a loss and sometimes even timidly before the Cross, but he loved the bells. They stirred his heart. Their chiming voices made him solemn. They seemed to be announcing more than just the hour and celebration of worship. They were the tongues of Heaven. What inhabitant of earth could comprehend their golden language? Every hour they rang out devoutly, and they alone knew which was the decisive hour. He remained at the window and listened eagerly to the fading echoes. Then he turned abruptly. He went to the door and yanked it open. He stood at the threshold and allowed his gaze to sweep across the faces of those who had assembled. They were all present; he recognized every last one, never having forgotten, since he himself created them. There were Régis de Cambacérès, Duke of Parma; the Dukes of Bassano, Rovigno and Gaeta, Thibaudeau, Decrès, Daru and Davout. He glanced back into the room – there were his friends Caulaincourt and Exelmans and the naive young Fleury de Chaboulon. Yes, he still had friends. Some had betrayed him on occasion. Was he a god, who should scorn and punish? He was but a man. They, however, took him for a god. As from a god they demanded anger and revenge; as from a god they also expected forgiveness. But he had no time left to act like a god and become angry, punish and forgive. He had no time. More clearly than the shouts of the crowd outside his windows and the racket made by his dragoons in the gardens and house, he could hear the soft but ruthless ticking of the clock on the mantel behind him. He had no time left to punish. He only had time to forgive and allow himself be loved, to bestow and to give: favours, titles and posts, all the pathetic presents an Emperor may give. Generosity requires less time than ire. He was generous.

III

The bells struck midnight. Time was flying, time was running out. The cabinet! The government! The Emperor needed a government! Can one govern without ministers and without friends? The ministers whom one appoints to oversee others must themselves be overseen! The friends one trusts, they themselves become distrustful and awaken distrust! Those who today cheer before the windows and turn night into day are fickle! The God in whom one put’s one’s trust is unknown and unseen. The Emperor has now assembled his cabinet. Names! Names! Decrès will be in charge of the Navy and Caulaincourt the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Mollieu in charge of the Treasury and Gaudin overseeing Finances; Carnot will, he hopes, be the Minister of the Interior; Cambacérès the Lord Chancellor. Names! Names! From the towers strikes one, then two, and before long it will be daybreak … Who will oversee the police?

The Emperor needed police and not just a guardian angel. The Emperor remembered his old Police Minister. His name was Fouché. The Emperor could easily order the arrest of this hated man, even his death. Fouché had betrayed him. He knew all the secrets in the land and all the Emperor’s friends and enemies. He could betray and protect – and both at the same time. Yes, all of the Emperor’s trusted friends had mentioned this man’s name. He was clever, they said, and loyal to the powerful. Was the Emperor not mighty? Could anyone dare doubt his power or be allowed to see his anxiety? Was there a man in the country whom the Emperor should fear?