The Last Caesar

The Sisters' Tragedy

by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

1851-1870

I

Now there was one who came in later days
To play at Emperor:
in the dead of night
Stole crown and sceptre, and stood forth to
light
In sudden purple. The dawn's straggling rays
Showed
Paris fettered, murmuring in amaze,
With red hands at her
throat--a piteous sight.
Then the new Caesar, stricken with
affright
At his own daring, shrunk from public gaze

In the Elysee, and had lost the day
But that around him
flocked his birds of prey,
Sharp-beaked, voracious, hungry for
the deed.
'Twixt hope and fear behold great Caesar hang!

Meanwhile, methinks, a ghostly laughter rang
Through the rotunda
of the Invalides.

II

What if the boulevards, at set of sun,
Reddened, but not
with sunset's kindly glow?
What if from quai and square the
murmured woe
Swept heavenward, pleadingly? The prize was
won,
A kingling made and Liberty undone.
No Emperor, this,
like him awhile ago,
But his Name's shadow; that one struck the
blow
Himself, and sighted the street-sweeping gun!

This was a man of tortuous heart and brain,
So warped he
knew not his own point of view--
The master of a dark, mysterious
smile.

And there he plotted, by the storied Seine
And in the fairy
gardens of St. Cloud,
The Sphinx that puzzled Europe, for
awhile.

III

I see him as men saw him once--a face
Of true Napoleon
pallor; round the eyes
The wrinkled care; mustache spread
pinion-wise,
Pointing his smile with odd sardonic grace
As
wearily he turns him in his place,
And bends before the hoarse
Parisian cries--
Then vanishes, with glitter of gold-lace
And
trumpets blaring to the patient skies.

Not thus he vanished later! On his path
The Furies waited
for the hour and man,
Foreknowing that they waited not in
vain.

Then fell the day, O day of dreadful wrath!
Bow down in
shame, O crimson-girt Sedan!
Weep, fair Alsace! weep, loveliest
Lorraine!

So mused I, sitting underneath the trees
In that old garden
of the Tuileries,
Watching the dust of twilight sifting down

Through chestnut boughs just toucht with autumn's brown--
Not
twilight yet, but that illusive bloom
Which holds before the
deep-etched shadows come;
For still the garden stood in golden
mist,
Still, like a river of molten amethyst,
The Seine slipt
through its spans of fretted stone,
And, near the grille that
once fenced in a throne,
The fountains still unbraided to the
day
The unsubstantial silver of their spray.

A spot to dream in, love in, waste one's hours!
Temples and
palaces, and gilded towers,
And fairy terraces!--and yet, and
yet
Here in her woe came Marie Antoinette,
Came sweet Corday,
Du Barry with shrill cry,
Not learning from her betters how to
die!
Here, while the Nations watched with bated breath,
Was
held the saturnalia of Red Death!
For where that slim Egyptian
shaft uplifts
Its point to catch the dawn's and sunset's
drifts
Of various gold, the busy Headsman stood. . . .
Place
de la Concorde--no, the Place of Blood!

And all so peaceful now! One cannot bring
Imagination to
accept the thing.
Lies, all of it! some dreamer's wild
romance--
High-hearted, witty, laughter-loving France!
In
whose brain was it that the legend grew
Of Maenads shrieking in
this avenue,
Of watch-fires burning, Famine standing guard,

Of long-speared Uhlans in that palace-yard!
What ruder sound this
soft air ever smote
Than a bird's twitter or a bugle's note?

What darker crimson ever splashed these walks
Than that of
rose-leaves dropping from the stalks?
And yet--what means that
charred and broken wall,
That sculptured marble, splintered, like
to fall,
Looming among the trees there? . . . And you say

This happened, as it were, but yesterday?
And here the Commune
stretched a barricade,
And there the final desperate stand was
made?
Such things have been? How all things change and fade!

How little lasts in this brave world below!
Love dies; hate
cools; the Caesars come and go;
Gaunt Hunter fattens, and the
weak grow strong.
Even Republics are not here for long!

Ah, who can tell what hour may bring the doom,
The lighted
torch, the tocsin's heavy boom!