Joseph Roth - The Hundred Days

But Death did not come for the Emperor. He watched the sun set. He heard his wounded soldiers groaning. The enemy granted him a brief respite, time enough for him to walk helpless, ailing, and at odds with treacherous Death among the deceased and wounded. A soldier led his horse by the bridle and his adjutant hobbled along behind it. He could not yet grasp that all was lost, everything was destroyed, and he alone still lived. Only two days ago one of his generals had betrayed him. Another had acted foolishly and a third carelessly. But the Emperor quarreled only with the greatest of all generals, the greatest of his brothers — with Death. At the same time, in a strange voice that may once — so long ago! — have been his but that now did not seem to be his, he cried out to the soldiers who were retreating all around him and fleeing past him like so many flitting ghosts: “Halt! Halt! Wait! Wait!” But they did not listen. They continued along on their way and disappeared into the night. Maybe they had not even heard him. Maybe he had only imagined shouting and had in reality said nothing.

A soldier accompanied him with a lantern, and the Emperor signaled to him to bring it ever closer. For over and over he believed that he could recognize this dead man or that wounded one at his feet. Ah, he knew them all better at this hour than the living, scattering soldiers knew him! He gestured once again to the man with the lamp and bent over a tiny, remarkably tiny corpse. It was one of the little drummers of the Imperial Army. Blood was still trickling slowly from the corners of his childish mouth and congealing before the Emperor’s eyes. The Emperor bent lower and then kneeled down. The soldier lowered the lamp to give the Emperor some light. Upon the poor scrawny body of the dead boy lay his instrument, the drum. He still clutched a drumstick in his right hand, but the other hand had fallen into the black muck in which his body lay half-immersed. His uniform was spattered with long-since dried mud. His shako had rolled away from his head. The dead little boy had a pale and thin face saturated with freckles. The hair above the boyish forehead was reddish, like a glowing little flame. His small bright blue eyes were open and glassy. He had no visible wounds on his body. Only out of his mouth did blood ooze, slowly but steadily. The hooves of a horse must have knocked him over and killed him. The Emperor examined the little body very closely. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the trickling blood from the corners of the corpse’s mouth. He opened the boy’s vest. A red and blue handkerchief, folded four times, laid upon the little one’s breast. The Emperor unfolded it. Ah, he knew it well! It was one of the hundreds of thousands of handkerchiefs that he had once ordered manufactured for his soldiers when he was General Bonaparte, along with the pocket knives and the drinking cups. Ah, he knew it well, this handkerchief! On a blue background within red borders, it contained a map with blue, white, and red circles to denote the places where he had fought his battles.

This boy — who could hardly have been fourteen years old — was thus probably the son of one of his oldest soldiers. The Emperor spread the handkerchief across his knees. Half of Europe, the Mediterranean, and Egypt were shown on it. How many battles had followed these! Never again, thought the Emperor, will French soldiers receive such handkerchiefs! Never again will I be able to mark new battles! Let then this last one be included here! He demanded writing implements. They were handed to him. Then he dipped the quill into the silver inkwell, stretched the handkerchiefs across his knees and drew a firm line toward the north, to the point at which the red border already began. On this spot he drew in a large black cross. Then he carefully placed the handkerchief over the boy’s drum, looked into his face once more and suddenly remembered a radiant, sunny morning on which he had spoken to this youth, imagining the bright ring of that boyish voice in his ears and ordered that the pockets of the dead be searched. They found a crumpled note signed “Your mother, Angelina.” In this note, the mother had told him he should definitely expect her in his barracks on the following Sunday at four o’clock in the afternoon. The Emperor carefully folded the note and gave it to the adjutant. “Inquire!” he said, “and give me your report!” Then he rose. “Quickly,” he ordered, “bury the boy!”

Two soldiers hurriedly shoveled out a shallow grave. The boy was quickly lowered in, for isolated random shots could again be heard. The lantern flickered and the wind gusted from time to time. The clouds dispersed, the moon rose, and the night was clear, cold, and cruel. Small as the little corpse was, it did not fit properly into the hastily prepared grave. The Emperor stood there, silent and livid, while behind his back his white horse whinnied inconsolably. It was like a deep sigh, sounding a bit like a human lament and a bit like a human curse. The Emperor remained still. Dirt was heaved back in over the tiny corpse. The soldier raised his lantern. He presented it like a gun.

Then the Emperor drew his sword and lowered it over the fresh, shallow grave. “For all of them,” he was heard to murmur. “For all.” His adjutant, the General who was standing behind the Emperor, had no weapon. He instead raised his hat. Suddenly other generals of the Emperor’s — Gourgaud, la Bédoyère, and Drouot — were there. They had been watching him from a distance, and they now approached, respectfully but embarrassed and confused.

“The horse!” ordered the Emperor.

They rode in silence, the Emperor leading. At five o’clock in the morning, when it was already quite light and a delicate blue-tinged fog was rising slowly from the lush dark-green grass, he ordered a halt. He was shivering. “Fire!” he ordered, and a pitiful little fire was kindled. It burned, yellow and weak in the silvery-blue glimmer of the early dawn. The Emperor tirelessly fanned the weak yellow flames. He looked at the soldiers, his soldiers. They fled on all sides, passing the little fire — infantry, artillery, and horsemen. Now and then, the Emperor lifted his head. Some of the passing soldiers recognized him. They saluted silently. They no longer cried “Long live the Emperor!” Ever paler was the fire and ever stronger the morning light. A formidable silence enveloped the Emperor. The silence seemed to burn stronger than the fire. It seemed to the Emperor that the retreating soldiers of his army were making ever-larger detours around him. A great stillness descended upon the meadow. And the soldiers who went past and saluted him so silently — the officers with their sabres, the men with their fixed gaze — seemed no longer to be living soldiers. They were the fallen and the dead. That was why they were silent. That was why they were voiceless.

The little fire went out. The day broke triumphantly. The Emperor sat down on a stone at the roadside. They brought him ham and goat cheese. He ate hastily and mindlessly, as was his way. More and more fleeing soldiers passed by. The Emperor stood. “Onward!” he commanded.

He mounted his steed. Behind him he heard the galloping of his generals’ horses and from a distance the occasional sound of his coach’s rolling wheels, following further back. And he closed his eyes.

He fell asleep in the saddle.

To Paris! This was the only clear goal for the Emperor. One of the generals was riding close behind him. Although his entire retinue already knew that he had decided to return to Paris, the Emperor said once again: “On to Paris, General!”

“As you wish, Your Majesty!” said the officer.

The Emperor was silent for a while. The young morning foretold a glorious, triumphant day to come. Out of the blue heavens came the carefree jubilation of unseen larks and from a distance the faint muffled echo of marching soldiers. There was a melancholy clanking of weapons, a yearning weary neighing of horses, the rising and then dying murmur of human voices, and here and there a loud and quickly subsiding shout or rather curse. To the left and right, and through field and meadow the disorderly troops stomped along. The Emperor lowered his head. He forced himself to see only the undulating silvery mane of his animal and the yellowish-gray strip of road along which he rode. He became engrossed in them. But against his will all the miserable sounds forced themselves upon him from both sides, and it was as if his army’s weapons were whimpering pitifully, as if the fine, strong, defeated, ashamed, and humiliated weapons were weeping. He knew that even if he had a hundred more years to live he would never forget this sobbing of the weapons and horses or the whining and moaning of the wagons. He could avert his gaze from the retreating soldiers. The clinking whimper of the weapons, however, pierced his heart. In order to fool himself and the others into believing that he was nevertheless planning some further undertaking, he ordered that guards be posted to look for deserters and arrest and punish anyone who strayed from the road, yet even as he was so busy issuing them his mind was not on the superfluous orders. He thought of Paris, of his Minister of Police, of the deputies, of all his true enemies who at this point seem to him more dangerous even than the Prussians or the English. Twice he ordered a halt for he had decided to arrive at night.