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 toward the palace amid cheers from the thronging, waiting crowds.
They waited in the gardens before the palace, clamoring 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 mustache 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. .