Joseph Roth - The Hundred Days

In Laon, before the tiny post office, stood a crowd — officials, officers of the Garde Nationale, and curious villagers with their good-tempered peasant faces. It was quite still and the sky was becoming noticeably darker. The hitched horses before the station neighed, happy about the oats they were being fed, a flock of geese honked busily home to their pen and in the distance could be heard the peaceful lowing of cows, the cheerful crackle of a herdsman’s whip and a sweet fragrance of lilac and chestnut mixed in with the acrid odor of dung, hay, and manure. In the low room of the post office it was already getting dark. Someone lit the solitary three-candled lantern. It seemed to the Emperor only to intensify the darkness in the room. Four additional lanterns with protective glass were brought inside. Four soldiers positioned themselves in the corners of the room and held the lanterns steady. The wide double door was fully open and directly opposite sat the Emperor on the smooth-planed bench that was intended for travelers awaiting the next arriving coach. So there he sat, legs spread, in his dirty and stained white breeches and mud-spattered boots, hands pressed down on his chubby thighs, and head lowered. The light fell on him from all four sides and from the lantern in the center. He was sitting directly opposite the open door and all the inhabitants of Laon stood outside and were watching him with an unwavering gaze. He felt like he was sitting on the defendant’s bench and they stood in silent, terrifying judgment over him. They would soon deliver their verdict, an unnervingly quiet one, and they were already deliberating silent and voiceless over this deaf, dumb, and awful verdict. He stared for some time at the strip of floor between his boots, at the two narrow planks of wood. He thought of Paris and his Police Minister and suddenly recalled the broken crucifix that he had brushed to the ground in his palace. The two dirty gray planks at his feet transformed themselves into the narrow golden-brown strip of inlaid flooring in his room, the Minister Fouché was announced, and a boot hid the fragments of the ivory cross. The Emperor stood up, for he could sit no longer. He began to walk back and forth, back and forth, back and forth across the small low room of the station. No sound issued from the throng of people outside the open door, yet he waited to hear some human voice. This silence was frightful; he waited for a single word, not a shout, not a cheer, but only a word, just a single human word. But nothing came. He walked up and down, acting like he did not know that the people at the door were watching him, yet it hurt him to know that they were staring. The deadly silence that these people emitted, their immobility, their undying and unwavering patience, their quiet eyes, and their immeasurable sorrow filled him with a previously unknown horror. The silent, limping general, his adjutant, his shadow, had risen with him. The adjutant hobbled exactly three steps behind. Suddenly the Emperor turned to the open door. He stood for a brief moment as if awaiting the customary cry of “Long live the Emperor!” — the cry that his ear so loved, the cry that so softly caressed his heart. The Emperor stepped to the threshold. The lanterns in the room illuminated his back, so the crowd outside could not make out his face. The people outside saw only the light behind his back. He was facing them and his countenance was lost within the blue-black darkness of the quickly descending summer night. The already silent people seemed to become even more still. The nocturnal crickets cheeped at full volume in the surrounding fields. Already had the stars begun to twinkle in the sky, kindly and silver. The Emperor stood in the open double doorway. He waited. He waited for some word. He was used to shouts, to cries of “Long live the Emperor!” Now the black dumbness of these people and the night washed over him and even the pleasant silver stars seemed sullen and hostile. Directly in front of him, in the first row, a bareheaded peasant spoke. His simple face was made clearly visible by the bright night as he said aloud to his neighbor: “That’s not the Emperor Napoleon! He’s Job. He isn’t the Emperor!” Immediately, the Emperor turned. “Onward! Forward!” he said to General Gourgaud.

He entered his carriage. “He’s Job! He’s Job!” rang in his ears.

“He’s the Emperor Job!” the wheels repeated.

The Emperor Job continued toward Paris.

He sat alone in the carriage. His back hurt horribly. The carriage sped along the smooth highway. It cut through the night, whose silvery blue luster and sweet summer scents of grass and dew were wafted in on both sides through the open carriage windows. The Emperor had long since overtaken his retreating soldiers. The pathetic clink of the defeated weapons could no longer be heard far and wide. All that was audible was the steady rapid hoof beats of the horses on stones, dirt, and wooden bridges, and the dreary rumbling of the wheels. Occasionally they seemed to speak. They repeated now and then: “He’s Job! He’s Job! He’s Job!” Then they fell silent once more, as if they remembered that they were mere carriage wheels and had no right to take on a human voice. Because of his severe back pain the Emperor reclined. But as he lay practically prostrate upon the cushions a new and different pain suddenly awakened, stabbing like a dagger through his heart, lasting only a second before darting from his chest and transforming into a delicate saw that began slowly and finely to slice through his intestines. The Emperor sat upright again. He looked through the windows of his carriage, left and right. This summer night was endless. Paris seemed further away than ever. As quickly as they were moving, it seemed to the Emperor that the horses were gradually slowing and he leaned out the window and shouted: “Faster, faster!” Down came the whip like the crack of a shot awakening a long, solemn sharp echo in the still of the night. The wheels began anew their rumbling chant: “He’s Job!” And the old familiar pain returned to the Emperor’s back.

He thought of old Job. He no longer had any clear idea of those biblical stories. He had never wished to conjure one of the downtrodden servants of God in his imagination. If ever he had made a fleeting attempt to conceive a vague notion of one of them, he saw him basically in the form and effeminate costume of a priest. Yes, a priest! And at that moment, for the first time, he could see old Job quite clearly; he even recalled having once met him, immeasurably long years ago. Years that were as wide as oceans. And they were red, like oceans of blood. The Emperor had once seen old Job himself; he was the kind and fragile poor old man whom people called “the holy father” and whom he, the Emperor, had once brought from the Holy City of Rome so the old man could anoint him. The Emperor now saw the pathetic old man again. Job seemed to be sitting opposite him in the back seat, just as humbly as once he had sat in one of the armchairs at the Imperial palace. With his patient old eyes he stared into the bold impatient ones of the Emperor. And sharp and clear-sighted as were the Emperor’s eyes, he knew that the humble and frail old man could see more than he himself, the Emperor. Yes this old man was Job, thought Napoleon. And for a moment he was comforted by that thought. Then it seemed that the old man was trying to whisper something, leaning over so as to be better understood, and repeating: “You too are Job! One day we will all be Job!” Yes, so it is. The Emperor nodded.

Just then the rapid hoof beats drummed loudly upon a wooden bridge and the Emperor awoke. He looked out the window. The horizon seemed to be brightened by the lights of the nearby great city, his city of Paris, where his throne stood, and he thought no more of old Job. The wheels also seemed to have forgotten him for they now sang a different tune — “On to Paris! On to Paris! On to Paris!” Now everything will be fine again, thought the Emperor. Now I will reveal and punish the traitors. Now I will discipline the lawyers, gather my soldiers, and defeat my enemies. I am still the Emperor Napoleon! My throne still stands! My eagle still circles! A few minutes later, however, as they got closer and closer to the capital, he grew anxious again. He could still see his soaring eagle, but it was being chased and was soon overtaken by numerous black ravens that flew more swiftly than he. Surrounded by crows the Imperial eagle hovered.