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.
Book Four. The End of Little Angelina
I
Many people visited Jan Wokurka during those days. His old comrades, the Polish Legionnaires, kept bringing new men with them, homeless friends, Imperial soldiers who were left even more helpless by the Emperor’s great new misfortune. Before, they had only been unhappy; now they were completely lost. The ground quaked beneath their feet and they could not understand why, for it was their native ground. It was Paris, the capital of their country! Yet their native Earth was collapsing under the feet of its own sons. The soldiers of the enemy armies were marching fully armed through the streets of Paris. One could hear the enemy’s marches played and trumpeted by the enemy’s military bands. All the armies of Europe, or so it seemed to the old Imperial soldiers, had arranged to meet in Paris. They drilled every morning. After that they marched, well fed and flawlessly uniformed, through the streets of the city. Meanwhile, the soldiers of the Imperial Army crawled along the edge of the pavement, ragged and starving. They were like masterless dogs. The Emperor was far away! He was sailing around somewhere upon unknown seas toward an unknown but certainly horrible fate. A new leader, a former leader, sat upon the throne of France — a fat, jovial king. They did not hate him, but the enemy had arrived with him, the well-fed troops with their hostile march music. The Imperial soldiers gossiped about the fact that the King’s carriage, in which he had returned to his capital, had been preceded by English cannon, Prussian cavalry, and Austrian hussars. The rest of the people had the very same thought. Since the enemy had brought the King, the King was also an enemy. Was he even the ruler of France at all, this man through whose capital the foreign soldiers were marching? Did France still have a leader? Was it not already the prey of the whole world?
Once upon a time, the whole world had been the great Emperor’s prey. Every soldier of the Imperial Army had been at home in each country of the whole great, colorful world. Now they were all strangers and vagrants, shuffling through the streets of their own capital. And that was why they gathered, as evening fell and dusk made them seem even more homeless, in the apartments of old friends. For they were hungry, and they wished longingly for a tobacco pipe and a glass of wine. And people such as the cobbler Wokurka were hospitable.