Joseph Roth: The Hundred Days

“He hasn’t forgotten any of us!” said another.

“He recognized him,” whispered dozens. “He knew his name. He even knew both his first and middle names. ‘Pierre Antoine Lavernoile,’ he said, ‘I know you.’”

Meanwhile, the Emperor mounted his horse again. Lavernoile, he thought, poor gangly Lavernoile! Happy Lavernoile! He raised his hat, stood erect in his stirrups, visible to all, and called out with a voice accustomed to being heard and understood over the noise of cannon: “People of Paris!” he shouted “Long live France!”

He turned his horse. Everyone swarmed him, separating him, his radiant animal and his gray cloak from his retinue. There were hundreds of people around him, men in uniform and civilian clothes and women whose red scarves glinted in the youthful sunshine.

He headed home, weary, sad, and ashamed. He was always embracing unknown poor people, giving them titles and orders, buying their support and winning them over. They loved him. Yet he was indifferent to them. He was ashamed. If he had to embrace one more Lavernoile. .! Was that the name? Lavernoile? There were thousands of non-commissioned officers in the Emperor’s great army, hundreds of thousands of soldiers. He was ashamed, the great Emperor of the little Lavernoiles. .

The Emperor ordered that in each city in the land one hundred cannon rounds be fired. This was his language. This was how he proclaimed to the people that he had beaten his rebellious enemies, the friends of the King.

The cannon resounded throughout the land, sending their mighty echoes far and wide. The people had not heard the thunder of cannon for some time. They were startled when the sound came to them again. They recognized once more the mighty voice of the returning Emperor. Even peace was proclaimed with artillery.

The Emperor’s brother said: “Why did you fire cannon? It would have been better to ring bells.”

“Yes,” replied the Emperor. “I love the bells, you know that! I would have liked to hear them. But the bells can wait. I’ll let them ring once I’ve defeated my powerful enemies, my true enemies.”

“To whom are you referring?” asked his brother.

The Emperor said slowly and solemnly: “The whole world!”

His brother stood. At that moment he was afraid of the entire world, which was the Emperor’s enemy, but he was also afraid of this brother who had the whole world as an enemy. Outside, at the door, before he had entered, he felt pity and anxiety for the Emperor but had decided not to reveal it to his face. But now, as he stood before him, he gave in, as usual, to the Imperial gaze and the Imperial voice. The brother felt as though he were one of the mighty Emperor’s anonymous grenadiers.

“Sit down,” said the Emperor. “I have something very important to tell you. Only you, and to you alone can I say it. I would have liked to have had the bells rung, but I ordered the cannon to be fired because the bells would have been a lie — a lie — as well as a promise I cannot keep. There is yet no peace, my brother! I must make the people familiar with cannon fire. I want peace, but I am forced toward war. If my postmaster had not deprived them of horses, all the ambassadors of the various countries would have left Paris long ago. They were accredited by the King. They are not guests of the French people or the Emperor. They delay my couriers at the frontiers. The Empress receives none of my letters. Oh, my brother! If one comes from our family, he knows nothing about this great world. That’s our mistake, my brother, a peasant mistake. I have humbled the kings, but to be humbled by me, by people like me, by people like us, doesn’t make them small. It only makes them more vengeful than they already were. The lowest of my grenadiers is nobler than they. It was an easy matter to defeat the poor rebels in the country. That doesn’t merit any bell ringing. There are still more enemies, even in France — the representatives of the people. They are not the people — they are the chosen of the people. The Parliament! I am subservient to them. But I alone can will freedom, I alone, because I am powerful enough to preserve it. I am the Emperor of the French because I am their General.”

“So you will wage war,” his brother said softly.

“War,” answered the Emperor.

He needed three hundred thousand new guns. He ordered them. And so there began, in all the factories of the land, a mighty hammering and forging and casting and soldering and welding. He also needed men for the three hundred thousand guns. And so, throughout the country, young men left their sweethearts, their wives, their mothers, and their children. He needed provisions. So all the bakers in the land began with triple zeal to bake loaves that would keep fresh; all the butchers in the land began to salt their meats in order to make them last longer; all the distillers brewed ten times more liquor than usual — liquor, the drink of warriors, making cowards brave and brave men still braver.

He ordered and ordered. The submission of his people filled him with lustful delight, and this lust for power made him place still more new orders.

It was pouring rain when the Emperor moved into the other palace, the Elysée, outside the city. Nothing could be heard except the powerful, uniform drubbing of the rain on the dense treetops in the park. One could no longer hear the voices of the city or the loyal, dogged cheers of the people: “Long live the Emperor!” It was a good, warm early summer’s rain. The fields needed it, the peasants blessed it, and the earth absorbed it willingly, greedily. The Emperor, however, was thinking of rain’s negative effects. Rain softens the ground, so that soldiers cannot easily march, and soaks a soldier’s uniform. The rain could also make the enemy practically invisible under certain conditions. Rain makes a soldier weak and sick. One needs the sun to plan a campaign. The sun fosters acceptance and serenity. The sun makes soldiers drunk and generals sober. Rain is not useful to the enemy who is attacking, but rather to the one waiting to be attacked. Rain turns day practically into night. When it rains the peasant-soldiers think about their fields back home, then about their children, and then about their wives. Rain was an enemy of the Emperor.

For an hour he stood at the open window and listened to the unrelenting downpour with devoted and weary concentration. He saw the whole land, the entire country, whose Emperor and supreme lord he was, divided into fields, gardens and forests, into villages and towns. He saw thousands of ploughs, heard the deliberate swishing of scythes and the more rapid shorter strokes of whirring sickles. He saw the men in the barns, in the stables, among the sheaves, in the mills, each one devoting himself to a peaceful love of industry, anticipating the evening soup after a full day and then to a night of lustful sleep in his wife’s arms. Sun and rain, wind and daylight, night and fog, warm and cold, these were things familiar to the peasant, the pleasant or unpleasant gifts of the heavens. At times an old longing rose up from deep within the Emperor’s soul, one that he had not felt during the confused years of his victories and defeats — nostalgia for the earth. Alas! His ancestors had also been peasants!

The Emperor, his face turned to the window, remained alone in the dusk. The bitter fragrance of the earth and the leaves mixed with the sweetness of the chestnut flowers and lilacs, the moist breath of the rain which smelled of decay and faraway seaweed wafted into the room. The rain, the evening, and the trees in the park conversed peacefully with an intimate rustling in the pleasant dusk.