The sun burned ever stronger over the wide, shadeless plaza. From time to time a harsh word of command was heard, a short drum roll, the blare of a trumpet, the clanging rattle of arms, the dull thud of guns on the ground. The people waited. And ever more fierce burned the sun.

Then they heard the Emperor coming. He arrived in a gilded carriage drawn by eight horses, the white plumes on their heads swaying arrogantly, proud silver flames; on both sides rode his marshals. His pages were dressed in green, red, and gold. Dragoons and mounted grenadiers followed behind. The Emperor arrived. He was hardly recognizable in his mother-of-pearl-colored cloak, breeches of white satin, and white-feathered black velour hat. He was barely recognized in the presence of his white-clad brother. He mounted the tribune, a massive, high throne. On either side of him stood his brothers and below him were chancellors, ministers, and marshals. So magnificent were they all that they too were hardly recognizable.

He felt as lonely as ever. Had anyone recognized him? He stood there, alone on his raised throne, under a blue sky, under a hot sun, high above the people and soldiers, between the wide, blue, calm, and enigmatic heavens and his audience, which was equally vast and mysterious.

He began to speak. He was confident of the power of his voice. But today even his own voice seemed strange to him. “We do not want the King,” he cried, “as our enemies do. Faced with the choice between war and humiliation, we choose war . . .”

A few days earlier, when he had jotted down these words, they had seemed to him very simple and natural. He knew the French. Honor was their god, disgrace their devil. They were the best soldiers in the world, for they served the Goddess of Honor, the warrior’s most unrelenting mistress. But as for the Emperor himself, what god did he obey?

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.