Joseph Roth - The Hundred Days

This question began to gnaw at him while he recited his manifesto with his alien voice. For the first time he was speaking to his Frenchmen from a great high platform; for the first time he wore a silken mother-of-pearl-colored cloak and on his head a strange hat with strange feathers. For the first time he felt the relentless, desolate emptiness of physical solitude. Alas! It was not the same familiar solitude that he had always known. It was not the loneliness of the mighty, nor the betrayed, nor the exiled, nor the humiliated. Here, upon this great, elevated platform, ruled the solitude of the physically alone. The great Emperor was filled with a sense of hollow prominence. Not a single one of the thousands of faces could he distinguish. He only saw over their heads; over the caps and hats, and far in the background were the unrecognizable faces of the crowd called “the people.” And his words seemed to him as hollow as his solitude. There, upon the tribune, he felt as if he were on some bizarre and absurd apparatus, on a throne and stilts at the same time. His cloak was just a disguise, the crowd was an audience, and he and the officials were actors. He was accustomed to speaking in the midst of his soldiers, dressed in his customary uniform, feeling the exhalation of those around him, detecting the beloved smell of sweat and tobacco, of pungent leather and caustic boot polish. But now he stood high above these odors, poor and great, empty and disguised, alone under the blazing sun. Even the weightless plumes on his head were a heavy burden, feeling like useless and ridiculous massive lead feathers. He suddenly removed his hat, practically yanking it off his head. Now, from all directions, the people could see his familiar dark, shiny hair. With a powerful thrust of his shoulders, he shed his cloak. It seemed that his shoulders themselves had done the work of his hands in casting it away. Now everyone could see him in his familiar uniform, just as it was depicted on a hundred thousand walls, on plates, on knives, in all rooms, in all the cottages of many lands. And with a different voice, that is to say, with his old familiar tone, he cried: “And you, soldiers, my brothers in life and in the face of death, comrades of my victories!” It was completely still. The Emperor’s voice echoed through the stifling air. The deputies and officials were no longer attentive; they were desperate for some shade. The people and the soldiers, however, were too far from the Emperor. They understood only every third word. But they now saw him as they loved him. And thus they cried: “Long live the Emperor!”

The Emperor quickly ended his speech. He hurried down the steps toward the cheers of the crowd. Ceremony dictated that he descend the steps with a deliberate slowness. But he was overcome with the impatience of a homecomer. He had lingered up there for too long, ungrounded. Ever quicker were his steps. More like a soldier than an Emperor, he practically leaped from the bottom step to the earth.

One could see on the abandoned platform his mother-of-pearl-colored cloak, limp and pitiful, a sorry and gorgeous mistake of the Emperor’s. His white-feathered hat had been retrieved by one of the dignitaries. The man held it helplessly, yet solemnly, with both hands. The people and soldiers gathered at the sutlers’ tents. Spirits, pudding, and bread were being given away.

Midday had long since passed, but the sun burned, splendid, torrid, insatiable, and very cruel.

This was how the Emperor solemnly swore to protect the liberty of the French. It thus seemed that he was no longer the brutish Emperor of old. Yet the people throughout the land heard only the clinking of weapons and the singing of soldiers: both the old soldiers, who were returning to their barracks after long months, and the fresh young recruits. The Emperor was gathering an army, there was no doubt. The people no longer believed the newspapers, which wrote that all the powers of the world were eager to make peace with the Emperor as quickly as possible. Lies fluttered over the towns and villages on false, colorful little magic wings, rising in droves from the newspapers, coming from the mouths of the hypocrites, the eavesdroppers, the gossips, and the omniscient. They even circled above the heads of the soldiers marching toward the capital from all directions and were marching out of the capital further to the north-west. So there would be war, and the colorfully winged news stories were lies. Alas, the people of France knew all the signs that war was coming. A great terror gripped them overnight, in all corners of the land. The motley little doves, the lies of peace no longer swarmed through the air; they had fallen, defeated by the great fear, by the brutal silence that foretold the truth — the truth about the impending war. The signal fires of the soldiers marching to the north-west were visible from their mighty encampments. Their drums rumbled throughout the land every morning. The troops marched along the hot, dry roads, cultivated fields on either side; they saw the grain ripening and asked themselves whether they would one day be able to eat it. Perhaps they would be dead before the corn was even ground; perhaps they would by then have become part of the earth, manure for the fields — and who even knew which foreign fields? The older among the soldiers, those who had already waged many battles for the Emperor, thought of their comrades who lay in foreign dirt. The older soldiers all knew one another. And one could distinguish them from the others because they conversed in their own special language, a language that all soldiers only learn in the face of death. They shared a hundred thousand common memories, and they saw heat and storms, evening and full moon, morning and midday, a saint’s picture and a well, a haystack and a herd of cattle, with different eyes than the younger men.

“Do you remember,” one of them might say to another, “that time in Saxony? That was the well where we from Third Company had to wait for two damned, long, stupid days.”

“Yes, yes,” the other would reply. “The well, I remember; it was three miles from Dresden.”

“And how those sausages at Eylau tasted!” said one.

And the other answered: “Sure, sure — that sausage came from a worthy steed!”

“It was the horse of a colonel!”

“This time it’s only a captain’s.”

“Any idea where that dumb little Desgranges wound up?”

“In the Berezina, I think. An old carp swallowed him, he was so small.”

“And Corporal Dupuis?”

“Died at Austerlitz in a thunderstorm. What happened to your memory? Have you forgotten good old Dupuis as well?”

The young recruits understood nothing of this talk. They only knew that they too were heading to their deaths. Perhaps, they mused, it was easy for these old soldiers to go to their deaths, since they did, after all, know the Emperor. To them, however, the Emperor was distant and life was immediate. Why did he want a war? Where were they marching to? What was the point?

Nevertheless, they had to march, and so they marched. And when they marched through Paris they went past the palace where the Emperor lived, and they shouted: “Long live the Emperor!”

But he, the Emperor, was alone. With increasing solitude he sat before his maps, huge, colored, and complicated, his beloved maps. They showed the entire great world. And the entire great world consisted of nothing but battlefields! Oh, how simple it was to conquer the world if one just studied the maps upon which it was represented! Here each river was a hindrance, every mill a stronghold, every forest a blind, every church a target, every stream an ally, and every field, meadow, and steppe across the world a spectacular setting for spectacular battles! Maps were beautiful! They showed the world even more beautifully than paintings! The earth seemed very small if one only examined it properly on maps. It could be traversed very quickly, as quickly as time required it, the relentlessly ticking clock, the incessantly running sand. .