There was little in common between Ariadne and the Porto merchant now conducting the auction, Vincencio del Gato, but they both had the same idea in their heads.
'Count Cesare, you madman!'
'Because stones are like bastards!'
The Porto merchant immediately hardened his face and shouted desperately at Cesare.
"Why are you talking such nonsense?
"Well, how could I know? The little girl who said that must know."
He calmly looked at his manicured nails and continued.
"What's a forgery?"
All of a sudden, the hall became noisy as if it had been hit by a bomb.
"Forgery? Did I hear you right now?"
"Are you saying <Vittoria Nike> is fake?"
"Is it real?"
The eyes of the people who filled the hall were all focused on Cesare and Ariadne who was sitting right next to him. Ariadne wanted to put a towel on her head and lie down. Cesare was like this throughout their lives, whether it was during their 14-year engagement or common-law marriage.
Occasionally, he had a big accident that he couldn't even imagine and put off to Ariadne. At that time, she was tied up under the name of his fiancée, so she silently went after Cesare, but why the hell did he even come now! She couldn't figure out if she should slap his back.
"It's a story I don't know at all."
Ariadne shook her head and tried to take a step back. When the girl who couldn't even attend the debutante ball tried to make an excuse, saying, "What do I know?", Cesare lied.
"A little while ago, Young Lady. You said that it's a forgery."
"I didn't say that!"
Ariadne protested against Cesare desperately with her mouth. She wanted to correct her words quickly and argue that this lady had nothing to do with it, but it seemed that the delivery of the content was a little late because of the swear words.
"Yes, there Lady! If you spit out nonsense, you will be held accountable!"
A merchant from the Republic of Porto gasped for breath and jumped down from the podium as if to grab Ariadne by the collar. Ariadne burst into tears here and said,
'Why are grown-ups doing this? I hate the tall man next to me and the merchantman in front! I'm still young and I don't know anything!'
It seemed to be. Then she saw Prince Alfonso in the front row, staring at her with a startled expression. If she leaves this mess alone, Alfonso will take care of the statue, right? Unfortunately, it was Prince Alfonso, not Count Marcelo, who made the last bid.
'Was it 2000 Ducato (about 2 billion won)?'
It was a lot of money, but it wasn't that much money for the Prince either. Without that money, there was no way he would sit down on the street or starve, and there was no way the Prince's palace would go bankrupt. Three or four big-budget events were held modestly, and palace repairs were postponed for several years.
Eventually, somewhere, a King or Queen will bring in the budget and make up for it. But if that happens, Prince Alfonso will lose his reputation. The throne, which, of course, had gone astray, which belonged to him, would be one step closer to passing to the madman now standing next to Ariadne. She didn't like that. No, in fact, she just didn't want to see Alfonso become a laughing stock and upset, even if he didn't make it to the throne. Ariadne decided to wipe Cesare's back just this time for Alfonso's sake.
"Right."
She let out a deep sigh, dusted off her clothes, and straightened her posture. Ariadne, having finished her grooming, looked straight at the merchant and exclaimed.
"Vincencio del Gato from Porto. An old-fashioned merchant at an antique auction?"
Her powerful bass fills the auditorium and draws the attention of the audience. Ariadne slipped up onto a wooden footrest that had been placed on the floor so that everyone in her hall could see her. It was about one step high. She grew a little, just enough to look down at the people in the flat room.
"Do you think this statue is really the <Vitoria Nike> that Halicardotos mentioned in <The Travels of Hellenia>?"
"You must have brought it because it's right, you immature girl!"
The merchant was so excited that he seemed to have forgotten all about honorifics and engineering. Ariadne ignored this and continued the story.
"Halicardotus lamented in <Hellenian Travels>, "Her delicate wings have already been damaged and restored due to a single damage caused by a Moorish army that swept through the temple during the Selephonic War Is that right?"
<The Travels of Hellenia> was a textbook commonly read for boys to study Greek. There were also some noblemen memorizing the passage.
"Yes, there is such a phrase."
"Isn't that the phrase that says it was damaged and restored?"
The Porto merchant raised his voice convulsively.
"What recovery! The statue was originally broken and put back together! If it was broken long ago, and if it was restored during the Hellenic period, its value as an antique would not have been diluted at all!"
The true back phrase read, "Recovery was impossible. There were no wings, no head, no arms in <Vittoria Nike>," but that phrase had not yet been revealed to the world. She had to somehow organize the situation with the rest of the circumstantial evidence.
"Do you know the saying that if you try to put a broken bowl together, it will still be a broken bowl?"
While Ariadne was talking while looking directly at the Porto merchant, she reached out her hand to Cesare, who was standing at a distance. Cesare held out both of his hands to ask what she wanted, then she pointed with her fingers at the longsword at his waist.
'Is it a sword?'
Ariadne glanced to the side and frowned. The club. He carries a club. How did Cesare know that? With a surprised expression on his face, he released the iron club he was wearing inside his waistband and behind his longsword and handed it to Ariadne.
Accepting the club, Ariadne walked out of the guest seat in the center of the hall and went up to the podium in front of her. It was the location where <Vittoria Nike> was exhibited. It is a space raised about 1 meter from the ground, so when she went up on it, she could see very well in the eyes of the audience.
The Porto merchant kept screaming.
"If the broken wings were restored, there would be some level of incontinence. But does that undermine the value of the stone statue? Is the stone statue Groot? Are you going to put water in the statue? How can you have some incontinence!"
"If a broken bowl falls, it will split again in the same place, right?"
"What do bowls and stone statues look like?! It's not a bowl that a decorative statue uses every day, and there's nothing to hold water in. and nothing to put weight on, so what's the big deal about incontinence in the wings! They were all made in Hellenic times! It's the same thing!"
Ariadne, now ignoring the Porto merchant screaming hysterically, strode towards the <Vittoria Nike> which was sitting on a wheeled pedestal. The <Vittoria Nike> is very heavy, so she had to put extra large wheels on the pedestal to make it a little easier to transport. The diameter of the wheels, if not small, seemed to be more than 20 centimeters each. She took a deep breath, looked closely at her pedestal, and raised the iron club high. She picked the front wheel of her seat closest to the crowd.
Thwack!
She then struck with her full weight. The club was hit squarely on the wheel. Ariadne's power couldn't even break the iron joint connecting the pedestal and the wheel, but the wooden wheel itself was splendidly broken into three pieces. As the wheels splintered, the pedestal tilted, and the massive statue, which had lost its balance, slowly began toppling forward.
"What are you doing now!"
The Porto merchant screamed full of astonishment a moment later, and the invited guests under the podium screamed as they watched the stone statue fall.
"Watch out!"
"It's falling!"
There was a certain safe distance between the podium on which <Vittoria Nike> is placed and the guest seats, but nevertheless, the guests got up in a panic and hurriedly ran away from their seats to the back. The Porto merchant grabbed his hair and continued to scream behind her, but unusually, he took no action to catch the crumbling <Vittoria Nike>.
Pra ra rang!Despite the weight of the other three wheels, the wrong direction and the angle of the wheels prevented them from moving properly, and the unpleasant sound of marble and wood rubbing filled the hall. He fell off the stage and landed on the ground floor where the guest seats were. What Ariadne broke was the left wheel. The <Vittoria Nike> fell obliquely from the left corner and slammed its left wing straight into the polished and hard oak floor of the Marquis of Chibo. The stone statue collapsed and the people in the room fell silent. <Vittoria Nike>, which fell to the floor and smashed the oak floor to pieces, was a whole piece with no broken parts.
"Is this stone statue really incontinent?"
She kindly added a word in case people didn't understand.
"If I had incontinence, the wings would have broken again when I was shocked, but this statue is as smooth as if it were newly made."
Ariadne jumped off the podium in front of the shocked crowd and went down beside <Vittoria Nike>, who had collapsed on the floor. She continued, stroking the pink marble.
"If it's not new, someone did a great job restoring it, and it must have been very well preserved in the ground. By the way, do you know the two biggest differences between the statues of the Hellenic period and the marble statues of our time?"
She ran her finger across the marble. Everyone in the hall was watching her.
"Ancient pagans painted marble statues. The color of the skin was apricot, the hair was brown, and the clothes were colored according to the character's social status. The better the state of preservation of the excavated marble statues of the Hellenic period, the more dyes they have. This is a story that any skilled antique dealer knows."
Nothing came out of her fingers.
"This statue is very clean."
The people in the audience were not breathing and were paying attention to Ariadne.
"By the way, isn't this stone statue a very beautiful pink color? If it was a pink marble like this, I wouldn't have needed to paint the skin color separately. Isn't that right, the Marquis of Chibo?"
Ariadne asked the Marquis of Chibo, who was closest to her. Surprised, she unconditionally affirmed Ariadne's question.
"Is that so?"
"But why did the ancient Hellenians bother to paint marble?"
"That, well."
Ariadne went back to the statue after freeing the Marquis of Chibo, who was too burdened with public attention.
"This is because the Hellenic people lived at the eastern end of the central continent, so the color of the marble coming out there was not pink, but a dull grayish brown. Pink marble is a specialty of the northern Etruscans, especially in Rastera, the city where this statue was excavated!"
Ariadne stood tall next to the giant statue and looked around at the people.
"Alternatively, the well-known stone statue in Tibos, the easternmost city of the Central Continent, is not in the Moorish Empire, which would have been lost if it had been plundered, nor in San Carlo, which would have come out through the black market if it had been stolen, but in Lastra, a remote corner of the countryside with nothing but a quarry. Why was it discovered!"
She slammed the club she was still holding in her hand at the fallen <Vittoria Nike>, no, at the imitation of <Vittoria Nike>.
"Do you have anything more to say, Vincencio del Gato!"
"I have one more question for him."
A tenor-toned man's voice suddenly resounded in Ariadne's hall. It was Count Cesare de Como, who had been sitting in the guest seat and leisurely watching Ariadne's one-man show.
"Is your name really 'Vincencio del Gato'?"Previous Next
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