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.