Produced by Dagny, and by David Widger
Translated by
Kendall Warren
THE life must be lived before the history of a life can be written, henceit is not my life that I am writing.
Having been attacked in early youth by an abominable moral malady, Irelate what has happened to me during three years. If I were the onlyvictim of this disease, I would say nothing, but as there are many otherswho suffer from the same evil, I write for them, although I am not surethat they will pay any attention to it; in case my warning is unheeded, Ishall still have derived this benefit from my words in having curedmyself, and, like the fox caught in a trap, I shall have devoured mycaptive foot.
DURING the wars of the Empire, while the husbands and brothers were inGermany, the anxious mothers brought forth an ardent, pale, nervousgeneration. Conceived between two battles, educated amidst the noises ofwar, thousands of children looked about them with a somber eye whiletesting their puny muscles. From time to time their blood-stained fatherswould appear, raise them on their gold-laced bosoms, then place them onthe ground and remount their horses.
The life of Europe was centered in one man; all were trying to fill theirlungs with the air which he had breathed. Every year France presentedthat man with three hundred thousand of her youth; it was the tax paid toCaesar, and, without that troop behind him, he could not follow hisfortune. It was the escort he needed that he might traverse the world,and then perish in a little valley in a deserted island, under theweeping willow.
Never had there been so many sleepless nights as in the time of that man;never had there been seen, hanging over the ramparts of the cities, sucha nation of desolate mothers; never was there such a silence about thosewho spoke of death. And yet there was never such joy, such life, suchfanfares of war, in all hearts. Never was there such pure sunlight asthat which dried all this blood. God made the sun for this man, theysaid, and they called it the Sun of Austerlitz. But he made this sunlighthimself with his ever-thundering cannons which dispelled all clouds butthose which succeed the day of battle.
It was this air of the spotless sky, where shone so much glory, whereglistened so many swords, that the youth of the time breathed. They wellknew that they were destined to the hecatomb; but they regarded Murat asinvulnerable, and the emperor had been seen to cross a bridge where somany bullets whistled that they wondered if he could die. And even if onemust die, what did it matter? Death itself was so beautiful, so noble, soillustrious, in his battle-scarred purple! It borrowed the color of hope,it reaped so many ripening harvests that it became young, and there wasno more old age. All the cradles of France, as all its tombs, were armedwith shield and buckler; there were no more old men, there were corpsesor demi-gods.
Nevertheless, the immortal emperor stood one day on a hill watching sevennations engaged in mutual slaughter; as he did not know whether he wouldbe master of all the world or only half, Azrael passed along, touched hi