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.