Chapter 2456 "Out of the Jungle" (1)

   When a group of young "upstarts" came to the Tuileries, Bonaparte told them such a story. One day, a wealthy Marseille businessman received a young man with a good family. The young man carried a letter of recommendation with him. After reading the letter, the businessman found that the paper was expensive, but three-quarters of it was blank, so he put Those blank letters were torn down and put into a paper box for recycling.

The young man didn't care about this and accepted the businessman's invitation to go to his house for dinner. At his house, the young man was stunned by the businessman's wealthy family background and good taste. The difference was that the young man was very satisfied with the family banquet, but he couldn't hide his doubts about the merchant's previous behavior, so the merchant explained to him, "You are too young to understand the masses, this is the only real power. "

  Georgianna, accompanied by the guards, came to the vicinity of Lechen Castle, and then she saw a group of farmers who were keeping free-range pigs in newly repaired pens.

   They were originally free and happy pigs, looking for their favorite tubers in the forest, and now they are caught, and they can't help wailing, as if they also know that all caught pigs will face the fate of being slaughtered.

It didn't take long for the farmers to pour a bucket of bright red things into their troughs. These are the beetroots left after the sugar was squeezed. Due to technical problems, there was actually a lot of powdered sugar left in the beetroots. Pigs and horses love them. Eating candy, they ate happily, and soon forgot the fear of being caught just now.

   Meanwhile, the farm is still dinging up to repair the house, which is the smokehouse used to make bacon. Due to technical limitations, bacon can be kept for 30 days in winter, and it can't be kept for that long when the weather is hot. It can only be used to make cured meat, but Christmas is coming, and many families will buy food for Christmas dinner. Buy some time in advance, the closer to the festival, the more expensive the price.

  Beef in Belgium mainly comes from the Netherlands. The Netherlands has developed animal husbandry, especially dairy cows. Not only are there a lot of dairy products, but the young bulls will be exported as vegetable cattle and sold after fattening in Belgium.

But if you want to drink fresh milk in the city, you still have to rely on Belgium's own farm to supply it. Georgiana once saw a milkmaid in Mechelen. She was leading her own cow to sell and sell it in the streets. Who wants fresh milk? Just stopped her, and she was on the spot milking the client's milk on the street.

Georgiana doesn't know if people drinking coffee in Parisian cafes have an appetite for latte after seeing that scene. Any village strives to be self-sufficient, but it will never be possible. It will sell surplus products to neighboring villages. , buy salt, condiments, and replace horseshoes. Farmers can actually do well if they don't pay taxes and rent, and if they don't encounter natural disasters and wars.

  But they have to raise lords and nobles who can talk about food and clothing. If they want to play a role in court life, they must collect enough rent and taxes from the peasants, otherwise they can only borrow from the king.

Richelieu demolished the walls of the lords' castles, making them useless for defense, and also destroyed their stud farms, leaving the French cavalry without horses, so that the king not only broke the feudal division, weakened the political power of the nobles, but also Let the nobles bow their heads and become gorgeous furniture. A problem that a pole to hang clothes can solve, it takes three or four duchesses to take care of.

   In that closed world, people compete for better jobs. Louis XV's handkerchief was lost, and a group of counts and dukes scrambled to crawl under the table to pick it up, and was finally picked up by a count, who then got the job of managing silverware for the king.

   When she observed those Belgian peasants, she noticed a characteristic. When she visited France before, the peasants wore cotton clothes, while the Belgian peasants wore dull tweed clothes. People tend to improve their lives when they have money. Georgiana had a ge cloth factory. Before the Great Revolution, ge cloth business was very good. After there were better options, no one wore it. It needs to be replaced with a new one.

   She couldn't think of a solution for a while, and only after the farmers locked up the pigs did Georgiana let the horses run. This place is located in the northeast of Brussels, very close to Tervuren Castle. It was the residence of the Dukes of Brabant in the 13th century, and later became the residence of the Governor of Spain, the castle was converted into a country house, and the Church of St. Hubertus was built nearby at the same time.

It remained like this until the 18th century, when Charles of Lorraine wanted to transform it into a Versailles-style summer house, but the chessboard garden he built first, the castle still looks like a hunting palace, and Maria Christina didn't live for a day after her arrival. Pass. Joseph II ordered the demolition of the duke's castle, but did not order the demolition of the garden. It is still possible to walk a short distance from the castle of Lechn to the garden of Charles of Lorraine.

   But as the headquarters of a bank, its location is too remote, and the banks are all in the downtown area. However, the fountains in the garden are all open, and it is not as remote as Georgiana imagined. There is a market nearby, which is the size of a rural market. To get there, you have to pass a country dirt road. Domestic or wild ducks walk around the lake as if they too find the water too cold.

   At the gate of the main castle, Georgiana first saw someone holding a drawing and pointing at the surrounding scenery, as if the "tenant" wanted to expand the "landlord"'s house.

   In fact, Georgiana wanted to build a direct road from Brussels to here. It would be better to have street lights on the side of the road. However, there are no lights in the downtown area, but it seems like a waste of time to lay street lights in this inaccessible place. But if there is a money transporter passing by, the forest is dark and the lights are blind, which is just right for the robbers to ambush.

   This again involves the location of the vault, which is what the bankers are most afraid of. If Napoleon takes the real gold and silver in the vault directly as military expenses, who can stop him?

  Georgianna got off the horse and ignored the two planners. She wanted to see if she could use something as collateral to borrow some money from the banker to pay off the bond of 26 million francs.

What I didn't expect was that the inside was much more "lively" than the outside. The decoration team transformed the hall originally used to hold the dance party into a lobby. There are French, Dutch, German, and English areas. Each area has two tables. , clerks and customers communicated across the table amid the noise of decoration.

"Give way!"

   Just when Georgiana was in a daze, she heard someone say behind her, and then she moved away, and two workers were carrying a potted plant into it.

   She couldn't help but follow it out of curiosity. It might have been a small living room for guests to rest in the past, but now it has become a reception room. William Cockerill, who she had met once, was talking to the manager.

   The manager's desk is not only bigger than the clerk outside, but also has a small sign with his title on it.

Georgiana withdrew without disturbing them, and looked around again. She found that there were no Spanish and Russian sections in the office window, and there were obviously not enough rooms in the castle. If they were turned into offices, there would be no rest. place.

   So she struggled, should the banker pay for the expansion, or should the landlord pay?

   (end of this chapter)