From Corsica to the Fourth Rome

That afternoon.

Jean Dubarly, who had been asleep, or rather unconscious for most of the day, woke up from his sleep.

Obviously this was not a normal awakening, because Du Barry felt a spasm-like pain in his abdomen before he opened his eyes.

"Wow."

Du Barry's head immediately woke up under the painful stimulation. While spitting with a distorted face, he opened his eyes and looked in front of him.

Before Du Barry's eyes were still those two faces that frightened him:

Laurence Bonaparte, that damned audacious Corsican savage; and Grosso, the scar-faced pirate who tortured himself all day long.

Seeing Du Barry wake up, Grosso snorted coldly and touched his fist. It seemed that the punch that just hit Du Barry's abdomen did not vent the anger in his heart at all.

After discovering the hole in Du Barry's house, Grosso couldn't calm down for a long time.

As a sailor who has traveled all over the world, Grosso can understand and accept many things, and can even understand those sailors who are too horny and intolerable at sea and have friction between same-sex passions.

However, after personally descending into the cave that exuded filth and stench, Grosso was still shocked by Du Barry's habit of humiliating people across species.

Grosso never considered himself a moral defender or a good person, but what little bit of morality and humanity he had was completely crushed and trampled by the horrific scene he saw.

This made Grosso extremely eager to tear up the beast Du Barry with his own hands.

Lawrence turned his head slightly to glance at Grosso, and stretched out his hand to block him, signaling him not to be impulsive.

Before leaving the house, Lawrence had ordered his guards to control the housekeeper and all the servants of the house, and immediately sent someone to ask the Duke of Choiseul to arrange a safe and comfortable temporary residence for the imprisoned women.

Just hearing Grosso describe the scene in the cave made Lawrence feel queasy.

Even though Lawrence had seen enough of the dark sides of those glamorous big shots in the eyes of the citizens, he still didn't expect them to be so perverted, rampant and unscrupulous.

However, even though Lawrence had already sentenced Du Barry to death in his own heart, he would have to squeeze out the last drop of value from him before throwing him into the cemetery like a rag.

"Fucking bah!"

Grosso glared at the innocent-looking Du Barry, and regardless of Lawrence's obstruction, he stepped forward and hit Du Barry hard on the chin.

In a hair-raising wailing sound, two bloody teeth flew out of Du Barry's mouth, hit the wall and bounced back to the ground. They rolled several times on the ground before stopping, leaving two streaks behind. Bloodstains.

"Ahhhhh!" Jean Dubarly felt his swollen chin and shouted with a distorted face.

"Grosso!" Lawrence frowned and shouted.

"I, I'm sorry, I just couldn't help it, damn it." Grosso spat on the ground, turned around and walked behind Lawrence, saying embarrassedly.

Lawrence did not continue to pursue the case, but looked at Du Barry, who was still shouting subconsciously, and interrupted him softly:

"Mr. Du Barry, we went to your home."

This sentence was like some kind of magic spell, causing Du Barry, who was shouting just now, to be silent for an instant.

Jean Du Barry's face was pale, his lips were trembling, but he couldn't say a word for a long time.

"You guys went to my house"

After a while, Du Barry squeezed out a complete sentence from his throat, but he only repeated Lawrence's words.

"Yes, that's right."

Lawrence nodded, walked gently to him, looked down at the frightened Du Barry, and added:

"I found something, some people, some animals."

Du Barry's pupils trembled obviously, and his face became even paler, as if his heart had forgotten to supply blood to his face because he was too frightened.

"I don't, it's not me."

Jean Du Barry lowered his head and kept mumbling something, then raised his head in collapse and shouted to Lawrence:

"It's not me! It's really not what I wanted to do!"

"Damn it!" Grosso became even more furious when he heard this, roaring and cursing:

"Not you? I dug a tunnel and stuffed those cages for you?!"

Lawrence sighed, stretched out his hand to stop Grosso and said:

"Let him finish, Grosso."

"Yes, I will say it." Du Barry looked at Lawrence and said without hesitation:

"It was Count Falcone, he asked me. Originally, I just kept a few companions in the basement. But not long ago, Count Falcone suddenly wrote to me, asking me to arrange this for him. performance. Ah yes! I remembered that he wrote to me around the time after your duel with him!"

"After the duel?"

Lawrence almost understood what was going on.

Count Falcone, who was originally a swinger, probably couldn't accept the reality of becoming an eunuch, and wanted to satisfy his obsessive mentality through this perverted and dark hobby.

"It seems that one bullet really changed a lot of things."

Lawrence thought, looked at Du Barry expressionlessly and said:

"Let's not put aside the matter of Count Falcone. You just admitted in person that you imprisoned at least six women, right?"

"Yes I am."

Du Barry lowered his head and nodded weakly twice.

In the face of so much personal and material evidence, he had no room to refute.

"What will happen if these things are exposed? Mr. Du Barry?" Lawrence asked immediately.

Du Barry was silent for a while and said as if talking to himself:

"I'll be in prison for the rest of my life. Unlucky enough to end up on the gallows, no."

Du Barry said, glanced at Lawrence and Grosso, and then thought of Duke Richelieu, suddenly laughed sadly, and said slowly:

"I will definitely go to the gallows."

If this matter really comes to light, even without considering the impact on Count Falconet's reputation, Duke Richelieu will use this as a reason to directly prompt Du Barry to be hanged on the gallows.

"As long as you understand, Monsieur Du Barry."

Lawrence glanced at Du Barry's red and swollen chin and whispered:

"Since your life is in my hands, I think you should be happy to cooperate with my work, right?"

"Cooperate?" Du Barry asked tremblingly.

Lawrence lowered his voice again, leaned into Du Barry's ear and said:

"You were a key witness in the attack outside Versailles."

"You want me to accuse Count Falcone...?" Jean Dubarly said absently.

"No, not Falcone, he's just an out-of-control clown."

Lawrence shook his head and said, pointing at it.

Du Barry looked at Lawrence's fingers with wide eyes, biting his lips tightly, and then relaxed after a while, and said in frustration:

"Duke Richelieu?"

Lawrence nodded yes.

But after Du Barry said the name of Duke Richelieu, he fell into a long silence, and it seemed that he was not ready to take the initiative to speak.

Obviously, his silence already hinted at his resistance to Lawrence's proposal.

When Lawrence saw this, he did not urge him, he just stood up and said:

"You have a few hours to think over your situation, M. Du Barry, and Grosso will remain with you this evening."

After saying that, Lawrence ignored the trembling Du Barry, turned around and patted Grosso to signal that it was time to leave.

"Humph" Grosso looked at Du Barry, bared his teeth and growled:

"Boy Du Barry, remember to eat less for dinner, otherwise it will taste terrible."

As the wooden door was slammed shut, darkness returned to the basement.

"I'm so sorry for being impulsive just now."

Grosso squeezed his fists and said with some regret, Lawrence had told him not to leave any scars on Du Barry.

"It's nothing serious, and I also want to punch this scumbag a few times."

Lawrence shook his head and said without pursuing it.

Grosso was relieved when he saw this. Although he cynically called Lawrence a boy every day, Grosso was still very clear about the master-slave relationship between the two.

As the first companion to land in Corsica with Lawrence, Grosso witnessed countless enemies fall into Lawrence's hands along the way, many of whom didn't even know how they died.

So he didn't want any rift in his relationship with Lawrence.

"But Du Barry doesn't seem to want to cooperate with us."

Reluctantly suppressing his anger towards Du Barry, Grosso frowned and returned the topic to Du Barry's performance just now, analyzing and saying:

"This kid is really not afraid of death. His life is in our hands."

"He is also in a dilemma now. No matter which side he chooses to fall to, he cannot bear the anger of the other side."

Lawrence chuckled and shook his head and said:

"And the most important thing is that I can see that Du Barry still has a sense of luck."

"A fluke?" Grosso asked in confusion.

Lawrence said with great certainty:

"He is still waiting for the Duke of Richelieu to rescue him. He probably wants to find his real supporter after leaving - the Countess Du Barry. It is probably this idea that keeps him hanging on until now."

"Then what do we want?" Grosso asked with a frown.

"His last hope was extinguished."

Lawrence turned his head and glanced at the basement submerged in darkness, and said slowly:

"Block all his escape routes, and then mark a path for him to survive that is under our control."

At the same time, in the Duke Richelieu's residence, in the Duke's private study.

"Father, I brought him here."

A middle-aged man with a serious face walked into the study with the disheveled Count Falcone as if escorting a prisoner, and said to Duke Richelieu behind the sunken wood desk.

Count Falcone remained silent beside this man, like a soulless puppet.

He is the father of Count Falcone, the son of the Duke of Richelieu, and the fourth Duke of Richelieu in history, Louis-Antoine Sophie de Vigneiro di Plessis.

However, he died only three years after inheriting the title of Duke of Richelieu.

Therefore, compared with this generation of Duke Richelieu and the fifth generation of Duke Richelieu who served as Prime Minister of France during the Restoration, he is just a small figure in history who left little trace.

Duke Richelieu behind the desk seemed to be concentrating with his eyes closed. After hearing his son's call, he slowly opened his eyes for more than ten seconds, glanced at Count Falcone, nodded slightly and said:

"You go out first, I have something to say with him."

"Father." The middle-aged man glanced at his son with hatred, frowned and said:

"What Falcone has done has already embarrassed us so much. Don't let him get involved anymore. Just shut him up for a few months!"

"You go out first."

Duke Richelieu waved his hands as if he hadn't heard. It seemed that he still doted on Falcone, his grandson, even though Falcone had lost his future inheritance rights.

The middle-aged man wanted to say something else, but due to the authority of Duke Richelieu, he had to give up. He sighed and left the study and closed the door behind him.

Duke Richelieu looked up at his haggard and crazy grandson and said:

"Dear Falcone, I have some bad news for you."

Count Falcone stood there without any movement. Only the slight shaking of his jaw proved that he heard the words of Duke Richelieu.

"Jean Du Barry, this pimp, was also a personal participant in that attack. He is your friend, right?"

The Duke of Richelieu looked into Falcone's eyes and said that he had already heard about the fact that his grandson and Du Barry had similar odors and were in cahoots with each other.

After hearing Du Barry's name, Count Falcone reacted and slowly looked up at his grandfather.

The Duke of Richelieu continued:

"He has been missing for two full days now."

"What...?" Falcone asked absently. He knew that Du Barry had a lot of very shameful secrets about himself. Although it was not necessarily fatal, if exposed, he would be completely destroyed. Reputation in disrepute.

The hole in Du Barry's house was just one of them.

The Duke of Richelieu ignored Falcone's astonishment and daze and continued:

"Many people have witnessed that Jean Du Barry was taken away by Laurence Bonaparte himself, and there has been no news since. But I am now convinced that Jean Du Barry was imprisoned in Laurence Bonaparte. In Nabal's mansion."

Count Falcone froze on the spot as if struck by lightning, lowered his head and muttered as if going crazy:

"Laurence Bonaparte. Him again. Why him again, why?! Why!"

The voice grew louder and louder, and finally turned into a roaring question, but no one could answer Falcone's question.

Duke Richelieu waited silently for Falcone to calm down and said in a deep voice:

"I know that Du Barry has something shady in his hands, especially concerning you, my dear Falcone. We cannot let him stay with Bonaparte."

"You're right, Grandpa."

Falcone nodded and managed to say a complete sentence:

"Are we going to accuse Bonaparte of kidnapping Du Barry?"

Even though Falcone's spirit has become more and more crazy, he understands at this time that he must not let that damn Du Barry be used by Lawrence.

"No, dear Falcone, even if Bonaparte is very suspicious, no one would believe such a groundless accusation, and I don't have any sufficient evidence."

A cold light flashed in Duke Richelieu's eyes and he said slowly:

"But correspondingly, as long as we prove that Du Barry is really imprisoned in Lawrence's mansion, it will be big news. His behavior that violates the political bottom line will be despised by everyone, even the king. I will be extremely disgusted with him.”

"Then how to prove...?" Count Falcone asked immediately.

"Jean Du Barry was taken away by Laurence Bonaparte before he disappeared. Although we cannot directly convict Bonaparte for this, we have sufficient reasons to suspect that he is related to Du Barry's disappearance."

Duke Richelieu said with a sneer, as if he was sure of victory:

"I have arranged for a colonel of the police to conduct a reasonable search of Bonaparte's house tomorrow morning, and then rescue Du Barry and demonstrate Bonaparte's crime to all Parisians. Hum, I I really admired this guy, but I didn't expect him to be anything more than that. I guess until now, Bonaparte thought his little trick was perfect."

After that, Duke Richelieu turned his kind eyes to Falcone and said with a smile:

"And you, dear Falcone, I know that your hatred for Bonaparte runs deep into your bones. And tomorrow is your day of revenge. I hope you can follow the colonel and expose Bonaparte with your own hands. crime.

"Revenge. Expose his crimes with your own hands!"

Falcone's eyes finally regained some sparkle, and he excitedly said to himself:

"I will throw him into the prison of the Palace of Justice with my own hands. I will inflict my pain on him myself and watch him struggle and tumble in the dungeon with my own eyes! I will also take Miss Elvy there and let her Look at that grand scene too!”

"Okay, Falcone, go get ready. At least take a shower and change clothes."

Duke Richelieu sighed helplessly and said that in order to help his grandson regain his mind and come out of the shadows, he had good intentions.