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By Root 2076 0

he was still tormented by the need to appease his tender heart by obtaining better conditions for his unhappy army. He wanted to see the King of Prussia. He had taken a hired carriage and gone out along the broad main road lined with poplars, on the first stage of exile in the early chill of dawn, conscious of all the lost greatness left behind in his flight. And on that road he had met Bismarck, who had hurried there in an old cap and polished jackboots, with the one object of keeping him occupied and preventing his seeing the King so long as the capitulation was unsigned. The King was still at Vendresse, fourteen kilometres away. Where could they go? Under what roof could they wait? Far away, lost in a storm-cloud, the Tuileries palace had vanished. Sedan already seemed leagues behind and cut off by a river of blood. No more imperial palaces in France, no more official residences, not even a corner in the home of the most humble of his officials where he could dare to sit down. So he elected to end up in the weaver’s home, the humble house he saw by the roadside, with its little cabbage-patch surrounded by a hedge, its one upstairs room and dark little windows. The room upstairs was simply whitewashed, with a tiled floor, and the only furniture was a whitewood table and two wicker chairs. There he tried for hours to possess his soul in patience, first with Bismarck, who smiled when he heard him talking about generosity, and later alone in his misery, with his ashen face glued to the window-panes, still looking at this French soil, this river Meuse flowing along, so lovely, through the broad fertile meadows.

Then next day and the days after came the other horrible stages: the Château de Bellevue, that desirable upper-class residence with view over the river, in which he spent the night weeping after his interview with King William; the cruel departure, avoiding Sedan for fear of the anger of the defeated and starving, the bridge of boats the Prussians had thrown across the river at Iges, the long detour round the north of the town, the cross-country roads and byways well away from Floing, Fleigneux and Illy, and all this lamentable flight in an open carriage; and then, on the tragic plateau of Illy, strewn with corpses, the legendary meeting of the miserable Emperor, who could not now even bear the motion of the horse, but had cowered in the pain of an attack, perhaps automatically smoking his eternal cigarette, with a party of prisoners, haggard and covered with blood and dust, being taken from Fleigneux to Sedan, moving to one side of the road to let the carriage pass, some silent but others beginning to grumble, and again others getting more and more exasperated and bursting into booing, with fists shaking in a gesture of insult and cursing. After that came still more endless crossings of the battlefield, a league of bumpy roads among the wreckage and the dead staring with wide open, accusing eyes, the bare countryside, great silent forests, the frontier at the top of a rise; then the end of everything, going down on the other side, the road lined with conifers in a narrow valley.

And what a first night of exile at Bouillon, in an inn, the Hôtel de la Poste, surrounded by such a mob of French refugees and mere sightseers that the Emperor had thought he ought to make an appearance, amid murmurings and catcalls! The room, with three windows on the square and the river Semoy, was the standard kind of room – chairs covered in red damask, mahogany mirror-fronted wardrobe, mantelpiece with spelter clock flanked by seashells and vases of artificial flowers under glass. Small twin beds on either side of the door. The aide-de-camp lay in one and was so tired that he was dead asleep by nine. In the other the Emperor tossed and turned for hours, unable to sleep, and if he got out of bed to relieve the pain by walking about, the only way to take his mind off it was to look at the pictures on the wall each side of the fireplace, one representing Rouget de l’Isle singing the ‘Marseillaise’ and the other the Last Judgement, a furious