It was the song of the French people. It was the song of liberty and duty. It was the song of the motherland and of the whole world. It was the song of the Emperor just as the violet was his flower, as the eagle was his bird, as white, blue, and red were his colors. It glorified victory and even cast its sheen upon lost battles. It gave voice to the spirit of triumph and its brother death. Within it was both despair and reassurance. Anyone who sang the “Marseillaise” to himself joined the powerful community and fellowship of the many whose song it was. And anyone who sang it in the company of many others could feel his own loneliness in spite of the crowd. For the “Marseillaise” proclaimed both victory and defeat, communion with the world and the isolation of spirit, man’s deceptive might and actual powerlessness. It was the song of life and the song of death. It was the song of the French people.

They sang it on the day that the Emperor Napoleon returned home.

II

Many of his old friends hurried to meet him even as he was still on his way home. Others prepared to greet him in the city. The King’s white banners had been hastily removed from the tower of the city hall, already replaced by the fluttering blue, white, and red of the Emperor. On the walls, which even that same morning had still carried the King’s farewell message, there were now posted new broadsides, no longer rain-soaked and tear-stained, but clear, legible, clean, and dry. At their tops, mighty and steadfast, soared the Imperial eagle, spreading its strong, black wings in protection of the neat black type, as if he himself had dropped them, letter by letter, from his threatening yet eloquent beak. It was the Emperor’s manifesto. Once again the Parisians gathered at these same walls, and in each group read, in a loud voice, the Emperor’s words. They had a different tone from the King’s wistful farewell. The Emperor’s words were polished and powerful and carried the roll of drums, the clarion call of trumpets, and the stormy melody of the “Marseillaise.” And it seemed as if the voice of each reader of the Emperor’s words was transformed into the voice of the Emperor himself. Yes, he who had not yet arrived was already speaking to the people of Paris through ten thousand heralds sent on ahead. Soon, the very broadsides themselves seemed to be speaking from the walls. The printed words had voices, the letters trumpeted their message, and above them the mighty yet peacefully hovering eagle, seemed to stir his wings. The Emperor was coming. His voice was already speaking from all the walls.

His old friends, the old dignitaries and their wives, hurried to the palace. The generals and ministers put on their old uniforms, pinned on their Imperial decorations, and viewed themselves in the mirror before leaving their homes, feeling that they had only recently been revived. Even more elated were the ladies of the Imperial court, as they once more donned their old clothes. They were accustomed to viewing their youth as a thing of the past, their beauty as faded, their glory as lost. Now, however, as they put on their clothes, the symbols of their youth and their triumphant glory, they could actually believe that time had stood still since the Emperor’s departure.