He observed the reflection of his upper body. He furrowed his brows, tried to smile, pursed his lips, opened his mouth, and regarded his healthy white teeth. He smoothed his black hair down onto his forehead with his finger and smiled at his reflection, the great Emperor grinning at the great Emperor. He was pleased with himself. He took a few steps back and examined himself anew. He was alone but he was strong, young, and vibrant. He feared no treachery.

He walked about the room, looked at the tattered lilies of the recently ripped-down tapestries, smirked, lifted one of the brass eagles that stood in the corner, and finally stopped before a small altar. It was a smooth piece made of black wood. A forlorn, faint odor of incense escaped from the closed drawer, and on the altar stood, spectral white, a small ivory crucifix. The bony, angular, and bearded face of the Crucified One stood out, unmoving, unchanging, and eternal, in the room lit only by flickering candlelight. They had forgotten to dismantle the altar, thought the Emperor. Here had the King kneeled every morning. But Christ had not heard him! “I don’t need it!” the Emperor suddenly cried out. “Away with it!” He raised his hand. And it was at that moment that he felt he should kneel. But at the very same instant he brushed the cross to the ground with the back of his hand, which he had opened as if to smack someone across the head. It fell with a hard, dull thud to the narrow swath of uncarpeted flooring. The Emperor bent down. The cross was broken. The Savior lay on the narrow strip of pale, bare floor, His thin ivory arms outstretched, no longer torturously constrained by the Cross. His white beard and narrow nose faced the ceiling, with only His crossed legs and feet still attached to what was left of the little crucifix.

At that moment someone knocked on the door and announced the Minister of Police.

V

The Emperor remained where he was standing. His left boot covered the whitish crucifix fragments. He folded his arms, as was his custom when he was waiting, when he was pondering or when he wished to create the impression he was thinking. He held himself such that he could feel his body and count and regulate his heartbeat with his right hand. People knew and loved this stance of his. He had rehearsed it hundreds of times before the mirror. He had been painted and drawn in this pose thousands of times. These pictures hung in thousands of rooms in France and all over the world, even in Russia and Egypt.