Joseph Roth - The Hundred Days

The Emperor’s brother Joseph came to see him. The Emperor had been awaiting him for some time. When he entered, Napoleon thought: You should have come sooner. But he said, “Good that you’re here.” They embraced briefly and coldly.

“Well?” asked his brother. It was as if he were there to demand payment.

“I know what’s on your mind,” said the Emperor. “You’re wondering whether I’ve decided to escape from the English. No! I’ve decided to surrender to the English!”

“Have you thought this all out?”

“No. I haven’t. I stopped pondering once I realized that my poor brain refuses to think. I surrender to my heart. I know, I know, this makes me seem ungrateful. I know it. A few noble friends have concrete plans to whisk me away and maybe they would be successful. But I won’t go through with it, do you hear? I refuse! Sometimes when I can’t sleep — and I don’t usually sleep very well — I see corpses, corpses; all the corpses that lie behind me. If they were stacked upon each other, they would create a mountain, my brother; if they were spread out, it would be a sea of bodies. I cannot! How many cannon have been fired on my behalf? Can you count the shots, or even the guns? Going forward I will not have even a single shot fired on my account. Do you understand?”

“You’re in grave danger,” said his brother. “They could kill you.”

“Then it will be one more life lost,” replied the Emperor. “I have already lost so many!”

He lay upon the high black bed, next to which was a small ebony table with a three-armed candlestick, and closed his eyes, the flickering candles casting eerie, wavering swaths of light over his face. It gave his brother the impression that the Emperor was dead and lying on his bier.

My brother should go off someplace alone, thought the Emperor, with the money he has acquired and saved. What do they want with me?

“Leave me alone, all of you!” he said. “Don’t worry about me, my destiny will be fulfilled. Go away, to the New World, start a new life!” Once again, the Emperor felt that vague suspicion that had troubled him previously — that they all wanted to save him and they did love him, but they also wanted to tie their names to his misfortune just as they had formerly clung to him when he was successful.

“Leave me be!” he repeated. “I share the fate of Themistocles. He too was alone. I go to the enemy. I’ve written the English Prince Regent. I’m placing myself in his hands.”

“I must warn you once more,” said his brother. “They will take you prisoner. They will keep you caged like a vicious animal. I have confidential reports to this effect. Captain Maitland has secret orders from the admiral to get you on that ship by any means necessary, with subterfuge or force.”

“He will not need to employ either one. Tomorrow or the day after I will go to him freely.”

“Then let us say farewell,” said his brother in a cold, practically hostile voice and rose. The Emperor sprang up. He opened his arms. They exchanged two kisses, one upon the cheek and one upon the forehead.

“We shall see each other again,” said the Emperor. He waited. He hoped that his brother might still say: “Take me with you! I shan’t leave you!”

But all his brother said was: “You’ll be back. We’ll work toward it and fight for it.”

“Poor fighters,” murmured the Emperor. And then: “Farewell!” he added in a loud firm voice. He turned to the window and listened to the roaring measured crash of the waves to which he would surrender himself the next day or the day after; to an enemy ship and to enemy waves.

He went to bed in his clothes. It was still early. The summer sun, large and hot, sank slowly into the sea, casting a warm red reflection on the windows that was mirrored in the glossy black furniture. The white cushions on which the Emperor was resting were tinged with a kind of golden blood. The reddish shimmer fell upon the Emperor’s sleeping countenance for a long time and transformed it into a bronze face. A few steps away from the bed, stiffly perched upon one of the stiff-backed chairs, sat the Emperor’s servant. The Emperor wished to be awakened punctually at midnight.

The red reflection faded, replaced by a silver-gray glow. A lighthouse blinked in the distance and sent a fleeting intermittent glimmer through the windows. The only sounds were the quiet breathing of the sleeping Emperor and the roar of the eternally wakeful sea. The servant did not move. It grew dark but he left the candles unlit. Every so often he glanced at the little clock on the mantelpiece. The time passed slowly; the hours did not fly by as usual, even though the clock was ticking with its normal, everyday, diligent regularity. He could also hear a bell tolling from the church tower. But between one peal and the next lay eternities filled with stillness, deep black eternities.

The servant sat there stiffly. He feared he would fall asleep, so finally he rose cautiously and tiptoed across the room. Even as softly as he tread, the Emperor woke immediately, sat up and asked:

“How late is it?”

“Not yet midnight, your Majesty,” replied the servant.

“Will everything be ready?” asked the Emperor.

“By eleven o’clock everything will be loaded, your Majesty.”

“That’s good,” said the Emperor. He lay down again, eyes open.

The door seemed to suddenly open. He wanted to call out but was unable to speak. He well knew that he was lying there half-asleep and powerless, but at the same time he pictured himself fully dressed walking across the great red room in the Tuileries. The door closed again but it was no longer the door of the shabby little room where he lay sprawled and helpless, but the great gilt-decorated double door in the Tuileries. Into the room came an old man wearing a long red soutane that failed completely to cover his polished buckled shoes. He walked hesitatingly and bowed numerous times. The Emperor got up from the bed, suddenly wide awake and young again, booted and spurred. As he crossed the room to greet the old man, his spurs clinked loudly, too loudly, although the thick carpet should have dulled the sound, and his sword smacked against the hard lacquer of his boot with an unseemly noise.

“Have a seat, Holy Father,” he said and pointed to a wide red plush armchair and was surprised to find himself speaking so informally to the old man.

The old man sat down and carefully arranged the pleats of his cassock over his knees. Out of modesty he tried to hide his shoes. He folded his hands in his lap, and the Emperor saw that they were the thin pale hands of an ancient man with a thousand intertwining little blue veins.

“Your Majesty,” said the old man, his bluish lips quivering, “why have you sent for me?”

The Emperor remained at his side and replied: “Because I am the Emperor Napoleon! I need the crown and the blessing of Heaven. It is beneath me to make a pilgrimage to Rome. I have conquered Heaven itself. I have brought Heaven down to earth. I should not have to make a pilgrimage to Rome! What is Rome compared with Heaven? The stars are my friends! What is the See of Rome compared with the stars? I want the Imperial Crown. I want to be anointed. The stars themselves have blessed me. The divine stars. I have sent for you, Holy Father, so that mankind will believe in me!”

“You are only an emperor,” said the old man. “You know nothing about the stars! You have displayed violence toward me. You are violent with everyone! And they obey you, but obedience of men of violence is different from mine. For I am not a violent man! I am the only man of peace who obeys you — and that will be your undoing. Thus far you have conquered only men of violence. I alone, I have no weapons or soldiers, and I obey you because I am powerless. Nothing is as dangerous to the powerful as the obedience of the powerless. The weak defeat the mighty!”