Chapter 3178 The Giant Whale and the Elephant (2)

Compared with the 200,000 French textile workers who were "directly" unemployed due to the 1787 Agreement, the 2,500 people who lost their jobs in the UK due to imported silk were still within the "controllable" range, not to mention that the Spitalfields area was already a recognized place of chaos. , how can it be messy no matter how messy it is?

On the contrary, it is about the timber scandal at the Royal Warship Dockyard. This matter has been ignored in British newspapers, but is reported in neighboring countries. After all, the British Naval Dockyard is also involved in overseas storage yards, and the wood has already rotted before it is used. .

 Some of them are because they have been piled for too long, and some are because they paid the price of fir wood when they bought it. However, these are not the places where "corruption" is the most serious.

There is a saying in "The Fable of the Bees": Without the opportunity to build new ships, the first-class shipbuilders and all their men would have died if they had not died of hunger or died young.

The First Minister of the Navy established a special investigation committee, and they submitted 12 reports. Whether it was a warship or a civilian ship, pulleys were used in the age of sails. This "consumable" was consumed at an astonishing speed.

 Anchor and anchor chain will not be damaged easily, and a set of anchor chain can last a ship for a long time. However, if there is a storm for one hour, the consumables will be lost much faster than ten days of good weather. The reform of the First Minister of the Navy is to establish a military factory to achieve self-sufficiency in such consumables without having to buy them from external contractors. Buying inferior products that endanger sailors’ lives.

  Before this, his reforms mainly involved "people". This does not mean that the First Lord of the Navy has the power to appoint officers, although many people wrote letters of recommendation to him. If you want to find a sure and feasible "doorway", perhaps the mistress of the Duke of York is more reliable.

Sailors will also grow old, and some old, weak, sick and disabled people were placed in the shipyard by the former commanders to do work similar to "night watch", that is, patrolling the warehouse area to see if anyone has stolen anything.

There are also some workers on the shore, but they are paid the wages of sailors on the ship. There is something wrong with it, but there is no problem. After all, the ship cannot go ashore again after it is launched into the sea. Workers are required to go to the ship for maintenance.

 The entire shipyard was almost reduced to a shelter, and the First Minister also built one outside to house orphaned sailors. The apartment where Severus used to live in London was located near the Foundling House. The Foundling House was also set up by a navigator and originally housed the children of sailors. In the early 19th century, it became a dumping ground for "nearby residents".

In the "New Orphanage" in Paddington, there is a very polite little bear who always uses honorific titles such as "Mr." and "Miss" when addressing people. However, he always keeps causing a lot of trouble, even though everyone knows He "tried very hard to get things done."

 In short, things at the Navy Yard were in shambles and in need of a complete "spring cleaning." In order to "deal with" various naval committees, military and civil administrations, the First Minister asked the king to add a "royal" title to the Portsmouth shipyard.

 Everyone was referring to those shipyards as royal dockyards because most of the oak used in early construction of ship masts and keels grew in royal forests, and royal permission was required to cut them down.

  But after so many years of felling, there were very few English oaks suitable for masts, and they had to be found from colonies such as New England. However, foreign oaks were very easy to rot, so fir was used instead. But cedar is too fragile to be used in large ships.

Unlike Rouen, Lyon will only allow banquet guests to wear clothes made in France, but they prohibit the advertising of British goods.

 Originally, Georgiana thought that Bonaparte summoned Mr. Martin to Aachen for the silk trade, because the silk textile industry there had already reached some scale with the support of Frederick II.

 Due to the long-term division, poor Germany has philosophers and poets such as Kant and Goethe. There are also many people who feel that education is a kind of compulsion and needs to be enforced by law. Their reading and writing skills are extremely weak.

Strictly speaking, the illiteracy rate in Italy is much higher than that in Germany, but Italians have good understanding and imagination. They will understand if they read the leaflets. But if they don't believe the person who sent the leaflets, the leaflets will be in vain. hair.

What's more, under the feudal system, traffic in Germany was congested and people's range of activities was very restricted. Merchants not only brought goods, but many people learned about the outside world from the merchants' mouths.

 What is the use of a landlocked farmer knowing what is going on at the seaside?

Anyway, she just needed to be careful when spreading the news. With things like this, she began to worry about Padma's situation in London. After all, the Witchcraft Act still existed in Britain at this time.

If Edgeworth was a courageless person, he would probably have gone back to London to "explain" as soon as the incident happened, instead of leading Georgiana here to talk and laugh with others.

 “Woof!”

She followed the sound and saw a **** dog outside the window. It stood very conspicuously in the snow.

"How did you come up with the idea of ​​letting Wormtail be the secret keeper?" Pomona asked Sirius Black, the "wanted criminal" who escaped from Azkaban, in the Order of the Phoenix headquarters.

"I thought no one would notice him." Sirius took a bite of the cream on the cake. "The others easily guessed that I was the secret keeper."

"Then they also need to know that Dumbledore used the Fidelity Charm." Pomona lowered his voice. "There are many hidden magics in the world."

At this time, there was a sound of heavy footsteps in the corridor, and soon Snape appeared at the door of the kitchen. He seemed to be shrouded in suffocating darkness.

 “Would you like to have a bite too?” Sirius asked Snape, holding up the cake in his hand.

"I thought I was here for a meeting today." Snape said glibly. "No one told me about the party."

 “Let’s go first.” Sirius said to Pomona while holding the cake, and then passed Snape at the door.

 When Sirius' figure disappeared, the two of them were left looking at each other.

Her heart was beating fast, but he just turned his head indifferently and left with Sirius.

 “Are you okay?” Edgeworth said in her ear.

“I’m fine,” Georgiana said. When she turned her head again, the black dog outside the window had disappeared.

Then the face of Peter Pettigrew appeared before her eyes, the way he looked in Gryffindor uniform when he was a student, the way he killed Cedric in the tomb of the Riddle family, and the way he fell in the snow. There was no blood color, and it was impossible to tell whether his face was frozen or dead.

 As a traitor, he was never trusted.

That silver hand was the "compensation" Voldemort gave him, and it was also the instrument of torture that finally took his life.

When they arrived at the ballroom, Bonaparte was already waiting for her on the dance floor.

 He was not wearing a hat and was wearing a green marshal's uniform. He raised his hand as if to invite her, and Edgeworth handed her hand over, as if completing a ritual.

　　No one can dance before they have the opening dance. There is no fireplace in the hall, and the single-layer glass cannot block all the cold air. The guests who are gorgeous but thinly dressed are all shivering slightly.

 “Are you cold?” he said to her in a gentle tone.

 “Kind of,” she said automatically, though she wasn't actually shaking about it.

Lucien whispered something to someone in the crowd, who waved behind him, and the music started.

“Dance, it will keep you warm.” He said as he put his hand on her waist. It was obvious that what he wanted to dance was not a minuet.

 After being taught by her dance teacher, she already knew that she had to hold up her skirt when dancing. Not only would she not be tripped by the floor-length skirt, but she would also be more elegant.

But she remembered the phantom that Hathor showed her in the Louvre. A group of people were dancing, but when Bonaparte walked in, they stopped dancing.

The waltz was too fashionable and too frivolous for the middle-aged man who was as serious as a German king, although he did not ban it like tennis.

 In fact, he could dance the waltz, which Pomona, who had only seen his portrait in the 20th century, did not know.

 As she began to spin under his guidance, she felt dizzy and nauseated like motion sickness.

 Soon she saw Hathor in the crowd, holding a glass of red wine in her hand.

“It wasn’t me who was dancing in the red dress that day!” she shouted to Bonaparte, but he didn’t respond, as if he didn’t hear what she was saying.

“I want to redecorate my room,” said another Georgiana. “There are flowers everywhere.”

 “How do you want it to be decorated?” said Bonaparte with a smile.

“At first I wanted an Egyptian style, but I changed my mind.” Another Georgiana said with a smile, “Have you ever seen Botticelli’s “Primavera”?”

 “You want to be dressed as Venus?” asked Bonaparte.

"No, it's her maids. Aristotle called them the goddesses of grace. They represent all the beauty and kindness in the world." Another Georgiana sounded like a curse, and sent out echoes, "In the distant future, the kind lady It will come, and every winter will turn into a spring breeze.”

 “Is this a prophecy?” Bonaparte asked eagerly.

 “Don’t you think this is very poetic?” the other Georgiana smiled mysteriously.

 He looked at her blankly, like a boy who had never seen a beautiful woman before.

She really couldn't stand it anymore, so she turned around and thought it would be better to keep out of sight.

 But then she thought about it, last time Hathor took away her body, this time...

 She looked up and looked around. This was no longer a splendid dance floor, but a dark palace.

 Without the tourists, the place was deserted, and the famous paintings hanging on the walls were all "looking" at her.

 She tried to leave through an exit, but was blocked by a sword-wielding man.

 “You can’t leave,” said the sword-bearer.

 “Are you...Eugène?” Pomona asked. She was not sure because he was still a teenager.

 He said nothing.

 “Are you controlled by Hathor?” Pomona asked.

 “No, I owe her a life.” Eugene raised his sword and said, “Go back.”

"How could you..." Before she could finish her sentence, she felt movement behind her, and with a sudden spin, she returned to the magnificent dance floor.

At this time, the opening dance has ended, everyone is applauding, and some people are joining in pairs.

 “Okay, I’ll do as you say.” He said with a smile.

"What did I say?" she asked subconsciously, but he thought she was talking nonsense, left the dance floor, and went to talk to an old man.

 (End of this chapter)