The professor was dancing about the platform with the agility of an
elephant and working himself into a passion for a set tirade against
the Emperor Napoleon, when those accurst feet of mine--no, poor feet,
I can not blame you for drumming then, nay, I could not have blamed
you had your dumb instinct thus outraged exprest itself in a yet more
forcible fashion. How can I, a pupil of Le Grand, hear the Emperor
abused? The Emperor! the great Emperor!
[Footnote 23: From Chapter VII, VIII and IX, of "Travel-Pictures."
Translated by Francis Storr.]
When I think of the great Emperor, in my mind's eye it is summer
again, all gold and green. A long avenue of lime-trees in blossom
rises up before me; on the leafy branches sit nightingales singing;
the waterfall ripples; in the borders are flowers dreamily waving
their fair heads.
Between me and the flowers there was a strange communion; the painted
tulips bowed to me with the pride that apes humility, the sickly
lilies nodded to me with tender sensibility, the roses with
wine-flushed cheeks laughed a welcome from afar, the night-stocks
sighed--with myrtles and laurels I was not then acquainted, for they
had no bright blossoms to attract me, but with mignonette (we have
since quarreled) I was then on the most intimate terms. I am speaking
of the palace gardens at Düsseldorf, where I used to lie on the grass
reverently listening to Monsieur Le Grand as he told me of the great
Emperor's heroism, and beat the marches to which those heroic exploits
were performed, so that my eyes and ears drank in the very life of it
all. I saw the march across the Simplon--the Emperor in front and the
brave grenadiers climbing up behind, while the startled eagles
screamed and the glaciers thundered in the distance; I saw the Emperor
clasping the standard on the bridge of Lodi; I saw the Emperor in his
gray cloak at Marengo; I saw the Emperor on horseback at the battle of
the Pyramids--nothing but smoke and Mamelukes--I saw the Emperor at
Austerlitz--twing! how the bullets whizzed over the smooth ice--I saw,
I heard the battle of Jena--dum, dum, dum--I saw, I heard the battle
of Eilau, of Wagram--no, I could hardly stand it! Monsieur Le Grand
drummed till my own eardrum was nearly cracked.
But what were my feelings when I saw him at last with my own eyes--O
beatific vision!--himself, the Emperor.
It was in the alley of the same palace gardens at Düsseldorf. As I
shouldered my way through the gaping crowd I thought of the deeds and
battles which Monsieur Le Grand had portrayed to me with his drum; my
heart beat the grand march--and yet I thought at the same time of the
police regulations which ordered that no one should ride through the
alley under a penalty of five thalers. And the Emperor with his
retinue rode right through the alley! The shuddering trees bowed down
to him as he passed; the sunbeams peeped timidly through the green
foliage, and in the blue heavens above there sailed in sight a golden
star. He wore his plain green uniform, and his small world-famous cap.
He rode a white palfrey, which stept with such calm pride, such
assurance and dignity--had I been the Crown Prince of Prussia, I
should still have envied that pony. Carelessly, with a loose seat, the
Emperor held up the reins in one hand, and with the other patted
good-temperedly his horse's neck. It was a sunlit marble hand, a
mighty hand, one of those two hands that had tamed the hydra of
anarchy, and quelled the feud of nations; and now it patted
good-temperedly his horse's neck. His face, too, was of the same hue
that we see in marble busts of Greeks and Romans; the features wore
the same expression of calm dignity that the ancients have, and on it
was written, "Thou shalt have none other gods but me." A smile that
warmed and calmed every heart played about his lips, and yet we know
that those lips had only to whistle and--"_la Prusse n'existait
plus_"; those lips had only to whistle, and clericalism died like an
echo; those lips had only to whistle to set dancing the Holy Roman
Empire. And now those lips smiled, and his eye smiled--an eye clear
as heaven, an eye that read men's hearts, an eye that at a glance
embraced all earthly things, while we mortals see them only one by
one, and only the painted shadows. The brow was not so clear; it was
haunted by the ghosts of coming battles, and at times a frown passed
across it; these frowns were the creative thoughts, seven-league-boot
thoughts, with which the Emperor's mind strode invisible over the
world--and I fancy each of these thoughts would have furnished a
German writer with materials to employ his whole life.
The Emperor rode calmly down the alley; no policeman stopt his way;
behind him, on snorting chargers, bedizened with gold and jewels, rode
his retinue; the drums beat, the trumpets blared; at my side mad
Aloysius spun round and round, and clattered out the names of his
generals; close by drunken Gumpertz bellowed, and the people shouted
with a thousand voices, "Long live the Emperor!"
The Emperor is dead. On a desolate island in the Atlantic is his
lonely grave, and he for whom the earth was all too narrow rests
peacefully beneath the hillock where five weeping willows droop their
green tresses in agonized despair, and a tender-hearted rivulet
ripples by with melancholy plaint. There is no inscription on the
tombstone, but Clio has graven thereon, in invisible letters, her just
sentence that will echo through the centuries like spirit voices.
Britannia! thou art queen of the ocean, but all great Neptune's ocean
can not wash from thee the stain that the dead Emperor bequeathed thee
on his deathbed. Not that windbag Sir Hudson, but thou thyself wast
the Sicilian sbirro whom the allied sovereigns suborned to avenge in
secret on the man of the people what the people had once done openly
to one of thy sovereigns. And he was thy guest, and had seated himself
at thy hearth.
To the end of all time the boys of France will talk and sing of the
fell hospitality of the _Bellerophon_, and when their songs of bitter
mockery are heard across the Channel the cheeks of all honorable
Britons will blush with shame. But a day will come when this song will
be wafted across the Straits, but not to Britain; the British nation
is humbled in the dust, the tombs of the abbey are in ruins, the royal
ashes they hold are forgotten; and St. Helena is the Holy Sepulcher to
which the peoples of the East and of the West make pilgrimages in
scarfed barks, and comfort their hearts with the great memories of the
savior of the world who suffered under Hudson Lowe, as it is written
in the gospels of Las Casas, of O'Meara, and of Autommarchi.
Strange, the three greatest adversaries of the Emperor have already
found an awful fate. Londonderry cut his throat; Louis XVIII rotted on
his throne; and Professor Sealfeld is still professor at Göttingen.