In this chap­ter titled Two Trav­ellers in the Place Ven­dome, the sto­ry unfolds with a qui­et spectacle—a funer­al pro­ces­sion, unusu­al in both dig­ni­ty and detail, pro­ceed­ing along a dusty path to Long­wood. Six­teen Chi­nese bear­ers walk in uni­son, each car­ry­ing a cof­fin meant not for six­teen, but for one man. Among them, one cof­fin once served as a din­ing table, adding a note of dry humor to the oth­er­wise solemn occa­sion. Their car­go is a small fig­ure in stature but immense in lega­cy. The atmos­phere is rev­er­ent yet tinged with absurdity—four elab­o­rate coffins for a man of mod­est size, under­lin­ing the com­plex bal­ance between phys­i­cal pres­ence and his­tor­i­cal mag­ni­tude. The onlook­ers do not speak, but the weight of lega­cy is pal­pa­ble in every step, echo­ing a glob­al fas­ci­na­tion with the fall­en emper­or whose dreams had once redrawn the maps of Europe.

As the pro­ces­sion moves for­ward, a stat­ue of the Emper­or stands like a sen­tinel of memory—marble eyes unblink­ing, shoul­ders draped in per­ma­nence. No bat­tle­field had brought his end, but rather time, exile, and the lim­its of the world he tried to reshape. The beat of a muf­fled drum leads not to com­bat, but to bur­ial, a dif­fer­ent kind of cer­e­mo­ny alto­geth­er. Here, he is not a gen­er­al but a symbol—no longer able to com­mand armies, but com­mand­ing atten­tion nonethe­less. His life’s bril­liance, now dimmed, is com­pared to the fad­ing echo of a wind-harp in an aban­doned room—an image that lingers. Once-glit­ter­ing coins of his empire lie buried beside him, their worth dis­solved into his­to­ry. In this moment, all mate­r­i­al vic­to­ries are ren­dered small, fold­ed into the dust of ambi­tion that out­lived even the con­queror.

Lat­er, the nar­ra­tive tran­si­tions to a scene beneath a sharp Parisian sky, where two trav­el­ers stand at the Place Ven­dome, peer­ing up at a col­umn pierc­ing the air. Atop the tow­er­ing struc­ture, a bronze man strikes a pose—imperial, deci­sive, iso­lat­ed. One trav­el­er squints, ques­tion­ing whether the fig­ure’s attire is the­atri­cal or regal, while the oth­er won­ders aloud why such a slight form stands so high above. Their con­fu­sion gen­tly mocks the monument’s intent, where height is meant to sig­ni­fy great­ness. The stat­ue, far removed from bat­tle or speech, becomes a curios­i­ty more than an icon. It asks not just to be admired, but to be ques­tioned. How do we mea­sure significance—by how tall the col­umn is, or by how real the man had been beneath his bor­rowed bronze?

This moment of casu­al inquiry opens a sub­tle cri­tique. The stat­ue rep­re­sents not the man, but the idea of the man. It is his­to­ry cast in met­al, stretched sky­ward, sculpt­ed not just in trib­ute but in inter­pre­ta­tion. In his liv­ing years, this fig­ure had been feared and fol­lowed, yet here he stands—small in form, large in position—reduced to sym­bol. The two trav­el­ers, detached from his myth, now see only pro­por­tions. This dis­crep­an­cy between lega­cy and appear­ance becomes a med­i­ta­tion on how time alters mem­o­ry. What once com­mand­ed rev­er­ence now draws con­ver­sa­tion; what was once unchal­lenged is now observed with dis­tance. The emper­or may have writ­ten his­to­ry, but time has edit­ed the mar­gins.

By plac­ing these moments side by side—the weight of the funer­al and the whim­si­cal con­fu­sion of the statue—the chap­ter draws atten­tion to the dual­i­ty of remem­brance. A man who ruled by force is lat­er remem­bered in still­ness. The ambi­tion that reshaped nations now stands locked in met­al, vul­ner­a­ble to pigeons and puz­zled tourists. Yet nei­ther the cof­fin pro­ces­sion nor the statue’s shad­ow denies his sig­nif­i­cance; instead, they sug­gest that sig­nif­i­cance is muta­ble. It is sculpt­ed not only in war rooms but in whis­pers, in silence, and in pass­ing remarks.

Two Trav­ellers in the Place Ven­dome becomes a lay­ered med­i­ta­tion on what it means to be remem­bered. The grandeur of mon­u­ments and the fragili­ty of mem­o­ry walk hand in hand. One day, a name might stir fear. Anoth­er day, it might draw a shrug or a squint from below a pedestal. And still, the fig­ure stands—silent, bronze, and enduring—marked not by what he holds in his hand, but by what his­to­ry has cho­sen to place at his feet.