Flowers, Swords and France

"Brother, how are you doing now?"

While thinking about her brother silently in her heart, Fran took a paintbrush and carefully painted the figure opposite her on the canvas.

She is now in a castle on the outskirts of Paris, painting slowly with several of her classmates. Not far across from her, there was an old woman sitting in a pavilion in the garden. She was sitting upright in her seat with a very relaxed expression. The morning sun shone on her body, refracting a golden halo, and she Behind it are fountains and flower gardens, forming a quite artistic scenery.

The old woman looked a little weak and her face was very pale, but she still cheered up and sat in the pavilion, trying to give the girls as much time as possible to formulate their ideas.

The female palace attendant next to her noticed her tiredness, so she asked in a low voice, "Madam, would you like to take a rest first?"

"No," the old woman replied in a low voice, "I want to get more sunshine like this."

"But……"

"It's okay, you can wait a little longer."

The female attendant did not dare to say any more, so she could only turn her head and hint at the girls with a somewhat stern look. Fran and the others naturally speeded up so that this distinguished Ms. Adelaide could rest early.

After a few more minutes, the girls all signaled that they had finished drawing, and the tired lady finally breathed a sigh of relief.

"Bring over all your paintings, I want to see... don't tell me which one was painted by who... I want to judge it myself."

…………

After browsing several paintings in detail, Ms. Adelaide pointed to one of them gently with her hand, "Who painted this painting? I am most satisfied with the painting."

Fran lowered her head and whispered, "Madam, I painted it."

"No wonder, it is you, Miss Treville..." The lady smiled with some relief, "I guessed it was you..."

The other girls looked at each other for a while, their eyes a bit complicated, with envy and a hint of jealousy. However, none of them were surprised that the crown of "Ms. Adelaide's Most Satisfied Painting" fell to Fran, except for one person.

"Madam." Mademoiselle Lola de Beauvant, the daughter of Baron de Beauvin, suddenly asked, "What you just said was 'the most satisfactory to you' rather than 'the best', right?"

Today, Laura is still dressed luxuriously and has an indifferent expression. Even her hair tied up in a high bun has not changed. Even when she was accompanying the king's sister, she did not appear to be at all restrained and her attitude was as calm as ever.

Ms. Adelaide looked at her with interest, and the female attendant next to her quickly told her the identity of the girl.

"You are right, Miss Bowen. It is indeed not the best painting," Ms. Adelaide said with a smile, "but it is indeed the most satisfactory to me. I have other reasons to be satisfied with it."

"Then can you point out which painting is the best?" Laura looked directly at the lady.

The female officer next to her was about to scold her for being rude, but the lady shook her head slightly and stopped her.

"What a stubborn child." She sighed with a smile, and then pointed to another painting next to her. "In terms of technique and layout, this painting is the best. Was this painted by you?"

Laura did not answer the question, but bowed slightly.

"Thank you for your fairness, ma'am."

Fran lowered her head and said nothing, secretly dissatisfied with her results.

Ms. Adelaide looked up at the sky, then looked at the girls and said, "It's getting late. You guys should play for a while and come back to have lunch later. Don't get suffocated next to the old lady..."

The scheduled arrangement for noon was to have a picnic on the lawn, but there was still some time. The girls all cheered quietly and prepared to go play together.

"Miss Treville, please stay here for a moment. I have something to ask you."

Only Fran was left alone. Laura glanced at Fran with a strange look on her face, but she still didn't say anything and followed the others to the golf course to play ball as promised.

"Miss Treville, come here," Ms. Adelaide called Fran gently after all the girls had left, "sit next to me..."

Fran walked forward with some apprehension and sat next to her obediently.

"What were you thinking about when you were painting?" the lady asked softly. "You were painting absent-mindedly. This is not the standard I saw that day."

"I'm sorry, ma'am..." Fran lowered her head, very annoyed at her abnormal performance, "I just..."

"You're just caring about someone, right?" the king's sister asked in a low voice.

Fran raised her head and looked at the lady in surprise.

"When I say that this painting satisfies me the most, I mean it from the bottom of my heart." The lady smiled slightly, "Do you know what I am most satisfied with? It's these eyes, this expression, this painting full of watchfulness and expectation. Her face... is just like mine back then. Miss Bowen's paintings are excellent, but they are only excellent in technique, and yours makes me feel the existence of emotions, yes... emotions, that's what's in the paintings. When I..."

Fran looked at the lady blankly, not knowing how to answer.

"You definitely can't understand." The lady still smiled, "How can people of your generation understand? So I'm surprised that you were able to draw such an expression just now... Do you really have a talent that ordinary people can't match? "

"I still don't quite understand..."

Ms. Adelaide looked up to the sky again.

"You must also know that our family did not become the Wang family from the beginning. Even when I was a child, I almost never thought that we would be today..."

Fran didn't dare to talk. Even as a young girl, she knew that this kind of topic was highly politically sensitive and she couldn't express her opinion easily.

Before she could speak, the lady spoke again, her tone old and warm, as if she was reading aloud from a history book.

"I have three brothers, but I am the only daughter of my parents - I am a twin born with my sister, but my sister died at birth - so they have doted on me since I was a child, and I have lived my life without worries. In my carefree childhood, who could have imagined the storm that would follow?”

"Yeah..." Fran sighed.

“In 1792, just a few months before Louis XVI was guillotined, and a year before my father was guillotined, my nanny took me out of France, and we fled, panicking, first to Belgium and then to France. Then I ran to Switzerland, and finally to Bavaria. , she ran to the south, she ran to Spain... Nine years, exactly nine years later, I came to Barcelona to meet her. From the age of fifteen to twenty-four, time flew by really fast. When I called her, she almost didn't recognize me, and it took a while before she hugged me and cried..."

[Her father, the Duke of Orleans, was actively speculating on revolution for the sake of revolution, participated in the National Assembly, and voted in favor of Louis XVI's death sentence, as mentioned above. 】

Read the original text in Liu#9@书/吧!

When she talked about the ups and downs of her teenage years, there was no ups and downs at all, as if she was narrating someone else's story. Many nobles who survived that era, when telling their children and grandchildren about their experiences, seemed to have little energy left to hate them, and just felt lucky to have survived.

After saying this, Ms. Adelaide seemed to have some energy again, and her face gradually became rosy.

Fran sat nearby and listened quietly without interrupting her narration.

"I'm sorry, it's such a good day, but I'm telling you this kind of thing..."

"No ma'am, I can understand the hardship you have been through..."

The lady shook her head.

"I'm not telling you about the pain back then. Maybe it was indeed a kind of suffering, but the suffering is history, and my life today is enough to make up for that. I'm telling you this just to tell you, The pain of the past also gave us the courage to depend on each other..."

"courage?"

"My brother, now His Majesty the King, also escaped from France the following year, and later came to Switzerland to meet me, and then lived with me in Schaffhausen. At that time, except for the lives we barely managed to save, we almost We have nothing, and we don’t have time to carry any property. And because of my father’s relationship, the nobles who are still loyal to the Bourbon family are unwilling to associate with us... In order to fill his stomach, my brother once sold his last possession. I was an old horse, and then I worked as a tutor to teach mathematics. What about me? I knew how to embroider, and later learned to sew. I made clothes for my neighbors everywhere, and earned a lot of money. I still remember my first I was so ecstatic when I made money for the first time. I carefully counted the dozen copper coins several times, for fear that I was missing one..." When she said this, she suddenly laughed, "You know I was What are you thinking about?”

"What?"

"I'm thinking that as long as I work harder and earn more money, my brother will be able to work less and come back sooner." Ms. Adelaide suddenly laughed again, "Fifteen or six Year-old kids are always a little silly.”

"No... no... Madam, this is not stupid..." Fran suddenly felt her eyes sore.

"At that time, I never thought that one day I would be able to return to France alive and resume my former wealthy life... and that one day I would become the sister of the King of France. Things are so unpredictable..." she said softly. Shaking his head, "However, if this was the case from the beginning, maybe My brother and I didn't have the relationship we have now. I wouldn't be stupid enough to tell you something stupid like, 'We were happier then,' but..." Ms. Adelaide closed her eyes slightly, as if As he was remembering something, a slight smile appeared on his face, "It is indeed worth remembering."

Fran listened quietly, with tears in her eyes.

"Later, my brother said he wanted to start his own career and left me. He arranged for me to go to Bavaria to join my great-aunt, Princess Conti, while he himself went to work everywhere... At that time, I I pray for him every day, hoping that God will bless him, and I am afraid for his life, hoping that he can come back safely as soon as possible..."

Then she seemed to say jokingly, "Now it seems that the wish has come true, doesn't it?"

"Yes, it has come true." Fran lowered her head, with a hint of whimpering in her tone, "It will definitely come true..."

Looking at the girl who was already crying, the lady felt a little guilty.

"I'm really sorry that I asked you to accompany an old man and listen to so many old stories. Sure enough, people talk more when they get older?"

"No, I really enjoy listening to it, I really do."

"Thank you, you are really a good boy," the lady patted her head gently, "My time is running out. During this time, I will help you more and make you famous."

"Don't say that!" Fran quickly raised her head.

The lady shook her head.

"Doctors only say nice things to me, but the one who knows me best is me, right? Don't comfort me, I'm already seventy years old, I can handle anything, but you're still young, you need to live well." Then she seemed to remember something, "I heard you have a brother, right?"

"Yes... yes..." Fran cried again, "I have a brother."

"No wonder." The lady's smile was somewhat relieved, "No wonder." (To be continued)