Shadow of great britain

Mr. Draisaitl's palms were sweating, and he went over the object that he thought he liked.

"What about Mr. De Mathieu or Mr. De Alfaro? I think these two young men are very good. They will have a very good future."

"Mr. de Mathieu is a very poor dancer, his body is uncoordinated, and he has no money. But he also has advantages. He has a very nice speaking voice, and he also knows how to coax women. But for me , he is so philanthropic, he is as slippery as a loach, swimming among everyone.

As for Mr. de Alfaro, I liked the fact that he was colonel of the dragoons. But he is a little too old, and I don’t want my husband to leave Paris with the army every now and then. What's more, dad, none of these people have titles, and I hope to at least fulfill my mother's wish and be a countess. "

When M. de Lesset heard this, he raised his eyes to heaven, and, as if hoping to draw strength of endurance from God's blessing, he took his daughter's hand, held it tightly, and held it as tenderly as possible. The tone spoke to her.

"God is my witness, Emily, to you, I have fulfilled all the responsibilities of a father in good conscience. Do you hear that? Emily, I love you from the bottom of my heart, so I hope that you Understand: The happiness of marriage is not entirely based on prominent status and property, but can also be based on mutual respect, just like your mother and I, and the essence of this kind of happiness is humility and simplicity.

Yes, your mother will complain that she didn't become a countess, but she says so, but when she married me, I was still a poor young man. The Revolution turned our family's business into a mess. If your uncle hadn't gained Napoleon's trust and participated in the founding of the Bank of France, we might not have recovered until now.

You have to understand that the world is in a state of change, especially in France, a country that is undergoing drastic changes. Today's perfect husband may face bankruptcy and stripping of his title in a few years. Those promising young people that you look down on today may just seize an opportunity and they will be able to ascend to the hall of elegance in a dignified manner. Isn't Mr. Thiers a typical example of this? "

Emily coquettishly said to her father: "My dear dad, I am very grateful for your care and love for me. You may never have thought that I would be so crazy and disobedient. However, dad, marry a nobleman. Is it really so difficult for congressmen? Didn’t you say that they are produced one by one? I know you are too exhausted from hosting banquets one after another, but at least you will not refuse to give me Give me your opinion?"

Mr. Draisaitl sighed: "I will not refuse, poor child, how could I refuse my little darling? But I must warn you, if you plan to find such a satisfactory husband yourself, you We must be very careful. The system of the House of Lords is a very new system in our government. Most of the people who remain there are newly canonized. There may be some old nobles in it, but they are in the turbulent times of the Three Kingdoms. In ten years, the property was exhausted.

Therefore, the richest guy in the French House of Lords is not half as rich as the poorest noble in the English House of Lords. Therefore, the French nobles needed to find rich wives for their sons. Their need for money marriages may continue for a century or two.

Maybe while you are waiting for adventure, you can search for a long time through your shrewd eyes, coupled with your charm, maybe one day this kind of miracle may happen. Because in this century, there are indeed many people around us getting married because of love.

But keep your eyes open, and don't think that a stranger has a conscience just because he has a flattering expression on his face, and don't think that he is moral just because you see him being beautiful. Of course, I completely agree with your opinion: all sons of nobles should have special temperament and noble behavior. This is their obligation.

Although there are no typical signs for the upper class now, for you, these aristocratic young people may have something special that allows you to recognize their identity. Just like you think obese people are sinful, you always He has such ability. My good girl, choose carefully and like a good jockey, don't miss your horse. Good luck! "

Mr. Draisaitl said a lot of earnest words, but what fell in Emily's ears was only one sentence.

Emily murmured to herself: "The richest guy in the French House of Lords is not half as rich as the poorest noble in the British House of Lords?"

Her eyes drifted to the young British man who was surrounded by a group of senior Paris police officers.

For human beings, once you form a first impression of something, you will naturally add a filter to it in your heart, so that it transcends the beauty and ugliness of the thing itself.

Just as those ladies and ladies who admired Napoleon would regard Napoleon's "butcher butchering pig" riding posture as "the majesty of the emperor", the Yorkshire pig smell that remained in Sir Arthur Hastings's childhood was now visible to Emily. It also looks a little more aristocratic.

She sat on the sofa and absently observed the people coming and going around Arthur.

"He must be a British aristocrat, and his status is not low, because even a serious and arrogant man like Paris Police Chief Henri Rissoquet was toasting him. Rissokat never showed off when facing his father. Don’t look so kind…”

"Chopin and Mr. Mendelssohn also came over? They seemed very familiar. Maybe he was a pianist among the nobility? No, maybe he was running the family banking business? The Mendelssohn family is a famous local bank in Germany. Aristocratic family. If he is engaged in banking business, then he must not be short of money. The aristocrats of England are richer than the aristocrats of France..."

"Ah... that's Mr. Hugo, and Pooh, and the fat one is... Mr. Dumas! He is so familiar with people in the literary and art circles? Is he a patron of the literary and art circles? His taste seems to be very good, Maybe he has a few theaters under his command. We go to the theater after afternoon tea every day until evening, then go to the concert hall to listen to a concert, and then let the police escort us home..."

"That's... Mr. Arago, director of the Paris Observatory and lifelong secretary of the Academy of Sciences? And Mr. Guy Lussac, the editor-in-chief of the Annals of Chemistry and Physics? He is also very interested in natural philosophy? Oh, no, he His face seems a little blue and his forehead is sweating. Is he feeling unwell? Or is it too hot in the room? There are indeed too many guests today. He comes from Britain, where it rains all day long. He probably isn’t very used to the warm weather in Paris…”

At this time, Arthur still didn't know that he suddenly had a bunch of unwarranted properties in his name.

Although in the eyes of ordinary people, he is already a rich man, but compared to the group of guys who came to the Kaido Sai Mansion tonight, he is a complete poor man.

In the past three years, he has indeed made a lot of money, some clean and some dirty. But as a man who kicked in the door of hell and slipped back, he has donated a lot of property to the workhouse, the University of London and the Royal Society since his return.

Today, his assets only include about 700 pounds of liquid capital, a three-storey Baroque villa near London's Hyde Park, shares in Brunel Road and Bridge Construction Company worth about 2,000 pounds and 15% of the shares of "The British" newspaper. .

If all these properties are converted into cash, it is roughly equivalent to more than 90,000 francs.

Although this amount of money sounds scary, it is actually not even comparable to Miss Emily's dowry, and it is even further away from the definition of middle income for the real English nobleman, the Earl of Durham.

After all, according to Count Duramo, the standard for middle income is an annual income of 40,000 pounds, which is 800,000 francs.

If Count Daramo is not willing to lower this standard, then Arthur will probably never have to worry about falling into the middle-income trap in his life. Because with Arthur's jumping ability, even with a run-up, he couldn't reach the bottom of this trap. This is indeed something worth celebrating.

Of course, what Arthur is most anxious about right now is not the middle-income trap, but Arago and Guy-Lussac standing in front of him.

Before entering the middle-income trap, he had already stood on the edge of the natural philosophy trap.

"I have already seen your article on the derivation of Euler's equation. Proposing the constant of viscosity coefficient is indeed a pioneering work. Unfortunately, with our current computing power, there is still a long way to go before this formula can be applied to the technical field. A long way to go.”

"Perhaps we can further optimize this equation. Navier seems to have been focusing on this recently."

"I heard that Mr. Babbage of the Royal Society is developing a difference engine. According to his basic idea, if the difference engine is finally implemented, even if Navier's work is unsuccessful, we can still initially use this formula."

"By the way, there's also the Coriolis force. I heard that you found its mathematical expression in just two puffs of a cigar?"

"Arthur, look...if we...oh, what's wrong with you? Not feeling well?"

Arthur smiled reluctantly: "Gentlemen, I think I may have drank too much and felt dizzy for a while."

When Guy Lussac heard this, the old man smiled heartily and said: "That's right, tonight is the time for the banquet. Although natural philosophy is also intoxicating, it should not occupy the main theme of the banquet. You are so young, it is the age to have fun. , go dance to refresh your head, it will be helpful for your future work."

Arthur finally breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the two great scholars letting him go.

This is the bad thing about Paris. The scholars here are not only academic figures, but also political figures.

It is usually impossible to encounter these well-known natural philosophy researchers on a large scale at London's high-class banquets. But Paris is different. There is quite a bit of a sense of academic excellence here, and what's worse is that those who have climbed to the top of the political arena are usually engaged in theoretical research, and chatting with them really has no experience at all.

But on the other hand, Arthur felt quite sad in his heart.

Borrowing the saying from Happy's hometown, "When Lord Ge was alive, he did not notice the difference, and since his death, there has been no comparison." When Sir Isaac Newton was around, there was only one Niu Gong in Britain who could excel in mathematics in terms of theory. , optics, and astronomy, but since the death of the Bull, Britain has returned to its rightful place in Europe in terms of theory.

Although Mr. Faraday is not bad, his most outstanding feature is experimental demonstration. Due to the fact that he did not receive formal mathematics education in his early years, Mr. Faraday has always been bad at theoretical induction, and this is what Arthur can play with him. Great reason to go together.

Arthur got rid of the pursuit of Arago and Guy Lussac, and found a quiet place to sit down.

Perhaps because he was distracted, he didn't even notice that there was a young and beautiful lady sitting on the other end of the sofa.

Emily's heart was pounding. She never thought that this noble young man from England would be so bold, because all the ladies said that these guys across the sea are usually more reserved than the noble blood of France. .

She looked into the other person's dull eyes and asked softly with the usual courage of a Parisian lady: "I seem to have never seen you before. Did you just move to Paris?"

Arthur was stunned for a moment when he was asked. Only then did he realize that the lady wearing a pink skirt next to him was the woman who had just approved a large number of "Hastings Detective Collection".

After experiencing the double blow of Arago and Guy-Lussac, even such a mean lady became much kinder in Arthur's eyes.

He shook his head slightly: "I'm going to Hannover on business, and I happen to be passing through Paris, so I stopped by to see some of my old friends."

"Business?" Emily suddenly remembered something. She tried her best to suppress the excitement in her heart and asked as calmly as possible: "Do you have business in Hanover?"

Arthur glanced at the dignified lady and confessed bluntly: "No, my business is not there. I was sent to Hanover because I made some mistakes in the government. Miss, you know, Sometimes people get unlucky, and I'm at that stage right now."

"Make a mistake?" When Emily heard this word, she immediately thought of something bad and even sat farther away: "Sir, everything will be fine. You can't be unlucky all your life."

Arthur didn't pay much attention to the lady's inconsistent behavior.

He just wanted to get rid of this lady so that he could have the sofa to himself.

"Maybe, one mistake after another, the position will be demoted again and again. Now I am the second secretary. Maybe next month I will be the third secretary. In two years, I may have to go back to the York countryside to recuperate. Pig."

"Raising pigs?"

When Emily heard this word, her eyes almost popped out of her head: "You mean, you turned out to be a swineherd?"

"I'm not just a swineherd." Arthur boasted proudly, "I'm an expert at breeding."

Emily almost fainted. She couldn't bear to sit on the same sofa with the swineherd. It would stain her beautiful new dress.

She quickly held her forehead, stood up and said goodbye: "I feel a little uncomfortable. I wish you a good night, sir."

Arthur stood up politely and asked, "Do you need me to help you to the lounge?"

"No need." Emily exclaimed, but soon realized her gaffe, and she said harmoniously in an instant: "I...I'm not that fragile. My brothers and my father are all Here they will take good care of me.”

Arthur watched the young lady go away. As soon as Emily left his sight, the London gangster crossed his legs and picked up his small wine glass.

Emily stumbled into the ladies' lounge. As soon as she walked in, a group of ladies chatting here discovered this annoying eldest lady.

They are different from the group of little sisters who often surround Emily. This group of real ladies has everything Emily wants, and they don't like the banker's daughter very much.

They continued their conversation as usual, no one even paying attention to the spoiled little canary that floated from outside the room.

"Have you noticed Count Daramo? My God! He is truly a natural gentleman, a true nobleman, and his bearing is evident in every gesture."

"He just talked to me about his manor in the countryside. It was really interesting to hear him talk about hunting. He is very knowledgeable about how to tan fox skins."

"I have heard before that the aristocrats of England are different from the aristocrats of France. They like to immerse themselves in a small world in the countryside and study how to grow wheat and raise pigs. These things are incredible to the Parisians. In France, Everyone is running to Paris, while in London all the noble people want to stay in the country every day."

"It's not just France. Italian nobles like to go to Florence, Rome, and Naples. Spanish and Portuguese nobles gather in Madrid and Lisbon. In this regard, English nobles are somewhat similar to German nobles. But two The only difference is that the German nobles are too rustic. They are like real farmers, rude in speech and ungraceful in their manners. But the English nobles are different. They are as noble as the French nobles. Some are even more elegant and know how to take care of a lady’s mood, and never cross the line easily.”

"But I heard that some people think that they are going too far with hypocrisy. Anna, I think you are going too far. Everyone knows that you like England, but France is not far behind."

"That's right, but as far as Earl Dalamo is concerned, I think he meets the standards of a gentleman. He is definitely one of the most outstanding people at tonight's banquet."

"It's a pity that he looks a bit old to me, although he is still one of the most graceful men in their forties."

"Really? Then leave Count Daramo to me. I heard that he has a student who is also at this banquet. Go and take a look at that young man. He is much younger than Count Daramo."

"Haha, Anna, you are thinking about good things all day long."