The Happy Life of a Duchess

"I think it's not just our family." After Leo got excited, he finally calmed down. Seeing that she really didn't continue to be angry, Adele also heaved a sigh of relief.

She is indeed very angry about this matter, but the matter is a foregone conclusion. At this time, Miss Barry's reputation is not much better, and most of the words mentioned about her are critical, and it seems that the situation is not very clear. Mrs. Barry and Miss Barry's moves have not yet been fully demonstrated, so if Leo is targeting her at this time, it is easy to get into trouble with him.

But if Adele's anger and common hatred, her expression can make Leo feel more comfortable, then it is worth it. Adele also hopes that her friends will stop indulging in such negative emotions.

Moreover, family quarrels have always hurt her deeply. Leo always said that he would think of "mother's tears" and so on, which also made Adele very uncomfortable.

Given the way the Barry family behaved, the honorable Miss Barry might not even feel that there was anything wrong with her.The presumptuous Mrs. Barry would not think it was a problem for them to toss their own gossip at Leo's engagement ball.

They are irrational.

There must have been similar things before, but this kind of reason seems a bit untenable compared to Miss Barry's direct calculation——

But from this point of view, there must be many people who were also affected by their impolite actions, or like Leo, had to eat the bitter fruit of displeasure.

It's like this, of course, there is a lot of grievances.

Adele hadn't been able to fully understand why Miss Barry suppressed the different ladies from other families by doing what she did as the "first lady", but now that she looked at it this way, she understood a little bit.

It seemed as if all the conversations in Paris were going to revolve around them. Miss Barry was not some precious gold, she acted so unprovoked and extremely rude, of course offended all the ladies and wives in Paris.

Leo knew earlier than Adele that the Barry family had the same arrogance and arrogance. This kind of vicious and overbearing domineering had troubled many wives and ladies who were not so "competitive".

This is also one of the reasons why she offended so many people during her time as the number one beauty. She really blocked the way of too many people.

"Right now, her reputation is still very bad, don't worry," Adele reassured her, "There must be someone to blame her for. Everyone is not so forgetful yet, and they won't wake her up so easily."

"Miss Barry is not married yet. Even if she becomes the king's mistress as rumored, she has to arrange another identity. After all, she is still a nobleman, not the kind of court actress and dancer. Not so lowly and humble."

"But since she is an aristocrat, she got such a black name, and it is becoming more and more serious now. I think she will soon have a complete grasp of the rumors. At that time, all kinds of sewage must be poured on her, not to mention her pregnancy later. It will definitely be confirmed, but it is even more unclear, and Madam Barry will not let her live so easily."

"Of course, after such a toss, Mrs. Barry's reputation is not very good, and it is getting worse now, and it may affect Mr. Barry. Although the reputation of this family is not very good, if it gets serious later Yes, Mr. Barry will definitely make a move."

"After all, Sophie Barry's life will not be easy after all. You can rest assured that it depends on how she intends to continue this black road."

Adele patted her hand in relief, Leo felt much more comfortable after speaking.

It's not easy for her to tell her family about these troubles, and she is afraid that her younger siblings will worry, but if she speaks out, she will naturally not continue to struggle.

Although Leo is a girl with delicate thoughts and feelings, she has a greater advantage in that she also has a very decisive part of her character, which is easy to let go. She is not as gentle as her mother, but she still has a bit of Manly and refreshing.

Leo then quickly brought up other matters, and after Adele confirmed that she really didn't bother about it anymore, she discussed with her the content of the next salon and the newspaper.

Things are going relatively well for the magazine right now, partly because they have touched a relatively untouched part of the magazine: the one that focuses on women and fashion.

On the other hand, their content is shared by the members of the salon, who are people with a certain status and influence, and then they revolve around topics that everyone is more interested in, and expand little by little.

Overall, it went much smoother than expected, but it doesn't mean that there won't be other problems.

For example, although the magazine has opened the call for free contributions to the outside world, the actual level of manuscripts is still relatively low. After several times, no particularly high-quality content has been accepted. In addition, the number of manuscripts is not large.

It seems that everyone looks more conservative.

Although I know this is a very popular magazine right now, I don't have the desire to actually get involved.

Adele hoped to use it to spark discussion, so naturally it couldn't end like this.

It is obviously not enough to the current level.

"So, you want to hold a theme-related manuscript solicitation event to encourage everyone to submit articles to us by rewarding money?" Leo thought for a while and thought it was feasible.

"Is that scheduled for the next issue, or after?"

"The fifth issue is already under preparation. I think it may be too late. At most, it is a warm-up. I have already asked Mr. Crewe to prepare it. At that time, I will ask Mr. Weihan to do a market-related survey, and then make a judgment. How much bonus is more appropriate."

Other magazines also have such essay solicitation activities, but they are organized according to the style of competitions, and Adele really hopes to prepare female-oriented content, but there are not many.

"So, what is female orientation?" Leo asked.

"It's that the audience of the content is mainly female readers. In view of this, I am considering setting the theme keywords of the event as 'love' and 'tragedy'." Leo thought for a while and probably understood it, but because he didn't It is difficult to specifically define the so-called female orientation.

"That's all right, let's create a special page, a place, or a reprinted special booklet of the event, which will specifically publish the content of the manuscripts that we think meet the two keywords of female orientation and love tragedy after screening— —The selected articles that meet the requirements are selected within the salon. It is a vote, and a certain number of articles are selected to be promoted to be published in the additional book, and then female readers are invited to vote. The final winner will follow our Salon member re-votes and reader votes are summed proportionally."

Leo thought about it carefully and felt that her idea was feasible.

"Since women's content is aimed at reading content for women, there is nothing wrong with asking female readers to comment. It is enough to ask readers to sign their letters, and some excellent comments from readers can also be published. However, if other readers pretend to be What about female readers or contestants mixing votes?"

"Just control the proportion." Adele also came up with a countermeasure.

"In our case, the votes and selections of the members of the salon are slightly more important. Oh, yes, you can also add the votes of the editors, and calculate them separately, and calculate a different proportion."

"Then you, as the publisher who pays the money, can have a heavier proportion just like the editor." Leo is actually average in mathematics, and he is not as fast thinking as Adele, but after Adele explained, she said Leo can also understand those words, and always feel very reasonable.

"That being the case, we can also invite several outstanding literary masters to make a selection in terms of literary description and writing skills." Adele winked at Leo, but Leo didn't react immediately. It took a while to understand what she meant.

"Of course, no problem." Leo nodded, "I can ask my father for help, he also has friends, please come and evaluate them together, they like to do this kind of thing, and they will get together regularly , to discuss articles of interest to them.”

"Looking at the theme, tragedy and love are two key words that they like, and they are popular content, but if they really want to write it, the place that can be restricted is probably the aspect of 'female orientation'." Leo carefully Thinking deeply, Adele also understands this.

In terms of content, if there are only two key words, tragedy and love, it is actually very close to the current romantic style, and many novels are written according to tragic love. The only difference is that the author is a male author. , when thinking about it, I also think from the perspective of men, so the audience of readers is also mostly men——

Of course, there were not so many literate women at this time.

However, this does not mean that no women are engaged in writing or reading.

There are still female critics or female writers, no matter whether they are domestic or foreign. Besides, most of the rich ladies can read and write, and even some courtesans can enrich themselves in this way.

For example, Adele's special friend, Margaret, who has become a good man, is actually a girl with excellent literary and artistic accomplishments. Under such circumstances, she still insists on reading and studying to enrich herself, Although part of it may be to better communicate with men in the upper class, it is undeniable that this is all knowledge she has learned by herself.

The two discussed for a long time, and finally decided to set the key words of the essay contest as "love", "tragedy" and "reality". There is no limit to the subject matter of the text, which can be poetry, novels, love letters or Other types of text content.

The competition is divided into two directions, and there are two awards, one is for all ages and readers, and the other is for women, that is, works created by women as the main reading group.

According to the content of the text he created and the intention at the beginning of the creation, the author chooses whether to submit the article to the general or female category. The content of the two will be displayed together in the subsequent evaluation, but when calculating the number of votes according to the formula, there will be It is calculated separately, and rewards will be given to the two articles with the highest votes in the two directions at the end.

The two of them are basically busy with this matter these days.

Because the fifth issue of the publication should have been ready for the final draft, now there is an extra part of the initial publicity of the solicitation content, and there is an extra advertisement for the magazine submission address.

In order to catch up smoothly and do enough publicity work, the two have been busy writing manuscripts and implementing this matter.

There are also some other troublesome things, such as the amount of the bonus, basic training for reading and screening of submissions, and the finalization of the remuneration for the invitation of a relatively prestigious writer like Mr. Hugo as a referee, Invitation to potential writers...

All kinds of things are true. When they started to hold this event, they realized how complicated it was.

For convenience, they had previously recruited an assistant editor for the magazine, who was mainly responsible for assisting Mr. Weihan and Mr. Crewe, and arranged for him to help if there was a shortage of people there. Unexpectedly, it was time for him to be busy, Ah Dale promised to say that after the event, there will be ample bonuses.

Because she is a relatively generous boss, so generally speaking, everyone's participation is relatively high.

After the fifth issue of the magazine was sent out, it really received some heated discussions——

The enthusiasm became stronger as more and more people saw the warm-up of the essay competition and the amount of prize money.

Rich nobles may not think that two thousand francs is such a big reward, but for many people, this reward is quite good for a small magazine.

And for the two No.1 winners, the magazine will give a guaranteed column position, which can be in the comment section or the writing of novels that the author is better at. placements for content.

As their columnist, he can get guaranteed money every month, solicit manuscripts once a month, and the manuscript fee after being selected will be calculated separately. If there are a lot of manuscripts used in the annual summary, there will be another bonus. In short, it is remuneration generous.

Of course, the two award-winning works will be published in a large format in the next issue of the newspaper.

Different from the content of the supplementary booklet that was used for public display before, the supplementary volume is crowded together with other shortlisted works. This is a special place, and there will be comments from writers, readers and salons. evaluation of.

As for the other shortlisted works, the content will be paid according to the remuneration of ordinary manuscripts, and a reward for participating in the activity will be given - six months of magazines for free, that is, six issues of newspapers for free.

Right now, once "Ms.'s" hits the market, it is basically the most sought-after. Of course, the nobles can easily buy it with money, but it may not be so easy to grab it for some people in less developed places or people who don't have enough money. Arrived, but at present, the main sales area of ​​the magazine is still in Paris.

Adele also heard that some foreign businessmen would choose to bring back a magazine about Paris fashion after they came to Paris on a business trip, of course including Paris specialties and so on.

There are also those who buy clothes and hats according to the teachings in the magazines. In short, there are many potential audiences. After all, women all over the world probably love beauty. This is their nature. Besides, men also like to dress themselves up.

"I heard that you did a lively thing..."

That's what Duval wrote in the first sentence of his letter.

Adele laughed out loud.

Seeing Jenny looking over, she shyly avoided it, and simply lay down on the bed to read the letter.

She was always in a good mood to read letters from her wise gentleman.