Vendémiaire · Daisies and Roses (Part 1)

Although in an unfamiliar environment, Louis slept relatively soundly with his good friend nearby. The next morning, he woke up bleary-eyed, reached for his pocket watch, and was startled to see it was almost nine o'clock. As someone who usually rose around seven, he hurriedly nudged his friend beside him.

"Al, it's nine o'clock! We've overslept."

Alfred was sleeping soundly, his black curls tangled against his face. At his friend's urging, he merely grunted and burrowed deeper into the warm eiderdown quilt.

"It's only nine, Louis! Why get up so early? Sleep a bit longer!"

Seeing his friend genuinely unwilling to rise, Louis had no choice but to leave the bed himself. He drew back the curtains and looked out the second-floor window at the distant rooftops. The sunlight was growing brighter, but the area was still relatively quiet, with almost no sound of passing carriages.

Inside 79 Rue Saint-Georges, it was equally quiet. Standing by the stairs and looking down to the first floor, Louis didn't see Marie, but he did spot a boy standing barefoot on two stacked chairs, wiping dust from the crevices of the marble relief above the living room fireplace.

The boy looked about thirteen or fourteen, still slight in build, with brown hair. He wore old clothes, clearly meant for rough work. The chairs he was precariously balancing on had their velvet covers carefully removed to avoid leaving marks, suggesting he didn't want the master of the house to realize the pristine furniture had been used as a makeshift step stool without his knowledge.

Louis observed for a moment and realized this must be Joseph, Marie's brother, whom she had mentioned yesterday. This made it easy to understand Marie's gratitude towards Alfred – a boy of this age couldn't handle heavy labor, and even working himself to exhaustion in a factory might not earn him much.

Joseph maintained his precarious balance on the chairs with a nerve-wracking posture, humming a tuneless melody while casually wiping the relief, until he noticed Louis watching him from the stairs.

Upon suddenly spotting Louis, Joseph visibly got a huge fright – he shifted abruptly, nearly losing his balance and falling straight off the chairs. However, in just a second, he regained his dangerous equilibrium.

"Respectful Monsieur Franctin, good morning!"

The boy flashed Louis a broad grin from upstairs, revealing teeth as white as porcelain. "You're up so early! Please wait a moment, I'll go check if the hot water's ready. I'll bring you wash water and a towel right away!"

As he spoke, he gave the relief a few more wipes – whether it needed it or not – then jumped down nonchalantly. He returned each stacked chair to its original position and replaced their covers, acting completely composed, as if using the chairs as a step stool was as ordinary as eating or drinking.

*He's a bit of a sly little rascal*, Louis assessed mentally.

Joseph ran off and returned about ten minutes later with hot wash water and a towel, bustling about attentively.

Soon after, Marie appeared. The girl wore a very simple old cotton dress, her sleeves rolled up slightly, as if she had just been working.

"Monsieur Franctin, you're up so early! Please wait just a little while, breakfast will be ready soon."

When Joseph had said "You're up so early," Louis could take it as the boy's excuse after being caught out. But Marie's tone and manner didn't seem like she was joking, making Louis doubt whether he had misread the time.

"Isn't it already nine o'clock? At this hour, it can't be considered early anymore, Marie?"

"Before ten o'clock is still considered early, Monsieur!" Perhaps hoping to salvage Louis's first impression of him, Joseph, who was tidying the towels, interjected. "When there's nothing going on, Monsieur Alfred never gets up before ten-thirty! If he went to a ball the night before, it'll be even later! But that's how everyone is in Paris, not strange at all."

Louis shot Joseph a glance that clearly meant, *"So that's why you dared to treat his furniture like that while he was asleep!"*

Joseph acted as if he hadn't noticed at all. He just grinned, picked up the basin of hot water, and left.

The breakfast Marie prepared for Louis was quite substantial: a few leftover Breton cakes, some square slices of dry bread spread with peach jam, a cup of coffee with cream, fresh fruit, and fresh eggs and butter. This surprised Louis somewhat.

"I thought we finished all the desserts last night," he said.

"Ah, yesterday, before putting them on the dining table, I set some aside first," Marie explained, arranging the silver cutlery for him. "If it were Monsieur Alfred having breakfast, I'd just give him bread and coffee. But I thought since you've come all this way, it wouldn't do to treat you too simply – the fruit and eggs were things I sent Joseph out to buy fresh this morning. I hope you don't mind."

As Louis sat down at the table, the doorman, Père Tonsard, came in. Pinching a folded newspaper between his thumb and forefinger, his face bore an expression of disgust not even concealed by his thick beard.

"This is for you, Monsieur Franctin."

Père Tonsard spoke as he roughly tossed the newspaper near Louis, as if discarding a rotten potato he'd been forced to pick up.

The newspaper emitted the pungent smell of cheap ink, so strong that Louis, caught off guard, sneezed.

"My goodness! Père Tonsard, why are you giving this to me?"

"I don't know, Monsieur. Early this morning, some newsboy ran up, shoved this thing outside my lodge, said only 'This is for the gentleman from yesterday,' and ran off. I figured since our Monsieur hasn't subscribed to anything like this, it must be meant for you."

Louis immediately remembered the newsboy from yesterday who had taken his twenty centimes but only given him one newspaper before running away. "Oh, ah, I see what happened. Just leave it here for now, I'll look at it later."

Hearing this request, Père Tonsard gave Louis an extremely peculiar look and muttered something under his breath: "So you *like* reading 'Le Richelieu Journal' that sort of thing, eh?"

"What did you say? Père Tonsard?"

He had spoken quickly and indistinctly; Louis hadn't caught it clearly. However, Marie approached just then. She glanced at the newspaper's title, deftly picked it up, and rolled it into a neat bundle in her hand.

"Monsieur, if you wish to read the paper, you can do so later in the study. There, Monsieur Alfred subscribes to pictorials and books, and there are newspapers from all the major publishing houses. Père Tonsard, I've sliced the bread and put it in your basket. Go fetch it yourself."

Without waiting for Louis's response, Marie took the newspaper away. Moreover, with just a meaningful glance, Père Tonsard obediently followed her out of the dining room.

Baffled, Louis only understood what Père Tonsard had misunderstood after finishing breakfast. In the second-floor study, he found yesterday's newspaper – perhaps because it was late when they returned last night, Marie had left it there. Looking at it, the realization dawned on him.

The newspaper's title was *Le Richelieu Journal*. The front page looked perfectly normal, with the headline in large capitals: "COMTE DE MARIGNY APPOINTED AMBASSADOR TO TURIN, DEPARTS IMMINENTLY," alongside an illustration of a distinguished-looking male noble. But when Louis turned the paper over, the headline that greeted him was "FIRE AT HÔTEL DE TREILLE: THIRTY OF THE VICOMTESSE'S UNDERGARMENTS STOLEN," accompanied by a risqué engraving of a scantily clad woman fleeing a fire. On closer inspection, the model in the picture seemed less like she was escaping and more like she was flaunting herself.

"..."

Holding this street rag, whose three out of four pages were filled with gossip about aristocratic scandals and engravings of unusually bold imagery, Louis finally understood the reason for Père Tonsard's strange look earlier. For a moment, he was at a loss for words.

*—Even the newspapers are this bold in Paris?*

Alfred didn't wake up again until well past ten. Discovering his friend wasn't beside him, he immediately rushed out of the bedroom, looking around.

"Louis, Louis! Where are you?"

"I'm here," Louis answered from the study.

"Ah, wonderful! I almost thought seeing you yesterday was a dream." With that, Alfred went back into his bedroom.

After Alfred had washed his face hastily with Joseph's help and grabbed a piece of bread, he walked into the study. There he saw Louis sitting by the window in the warm sunlight, looking up from a thick *Fashion Pictorial* and gazing at him expressionlessly.

"You don't even sit down to eat?" Louis said. "If the Count saw you like this, I can't imagine what he'd think."

Alfred, who was eating the bread, choked slightly, almost coughing.

"You've learned to be wicked, Louis! Why bring that up first thing in the morning?" Alfred retorted, taking a bite of bread defensively. "Eating breakfast standing aids digestion. It's common knowledge."

"Sounds like another Parisian common knowledge. I rather suspect it's because they often eat too much dinner and too little breakfast."

"Alright, alright, I'm almost done anyway." Alfred finished the bread in his hand in a few bites. "I'll help you pick out some clothes later. This afternoon, we'll go for a walk in the Bois de Boulogne."

"Are you going to see Mademoiselle Marguerite this afternoon? — I brought my own clothes; I don't need yours."

"That won't do. If I don't have anything suitable for you, we'll go straight to the Palais-Royal; there are shops there where you can buy ready-made clothes." Alfred made the decision authoritatively. "Darling, Parisians are all snobs. I won't have my dear little Louis being picked on by that crowd just because his shirt isn't the latest style."