The Cardinal's decision to call his younger daughter into the study instead of his eldest son was somewhat impromptu.
He was in the mood for gossip, and his son was in no mood to be a gossip partner.
But then his youngest daughter was right in front of him.
The Cardinal sat down at the bar and poured himself a glass of grappa, filling the bottom of a wine glass.
If the person sitting in front of him had been his eldest son, he would have poured two glasses, but now it felt awkward to hand over strong alcohol to his youngest daughter.
Ariadne handed her father some lukewarm water as usual.
It was the piece that was used to accompany the daytime drinking of the regent Cesare.
The Cardinal adjusted the strength of the liquor by adding lukewarm water, wondering where his young daughter had learned such things.
“The King has decided not to support the Third Crusade.”
The Cardinal muttered a few curse words, saying, "You're such a slut," and took a sip of his grappa.
Ariadne opened her eyes wide.
“Then how do His Majesty plan to deal with the heavy cavalry that came to the border?”
“Well. Is it just the heavy cavalry? I heard that the infantry is being supplemented now.”
Ariadne's expression hardened. This was not good.
“Then, are they relying solely on Prince Alfonso’s diplomatic capabilities in the Kingdom of Gallico?”
“That is, unless the Marquis Baldessar has some brilliant new plan that he has kept a secret from me, and that is in Carlo Palizio.”
The Cardinal shook his head.
“I don’t see any particular hole to jump out of. I wonder what the King is thinking.”
While the Cardinal was drinking in broad daylight and lamenting the state of his country, Ariadne pondered the differences between her past life and the present.
In her previous life, it was about half a year later when Leo III summoned Cardinal de Mare and asked for help.
By then, Philip IV had already paid most of the gold for the Third Crusade.
So Pope Louis was able to completely change his appearance and pressure Philip IV, and Cardinal de Mare was able to push Isabella into becoming the Crown Princess in return for moving the Holy See.
'But this time, that's impossible.'
Ariadne's chance to become a Princess was also blown away. It was heartbreaking.
She desperately wanted a sip of her father's liquor.
A glass of alcohol that goes down her esophagus and hits her brain would help her sleep without thinking.
'The only thing that has improved in this life compared to the last is the fact that the Gaeta region remains intact within the Etruscan kingdom...'
In an instant, the halo of light scattered across the tip of Ariadne's right hand emitted a diamond-like brilliance.
It was like fireflies were dancing on her fingernails.
She unconsciously glanced at the Cardinal, but he seemed to see nothing sparkling.
'What, did I do well?'
The halo gave no answer.
As Ariadne was thinking about the Golden Rule, the Cardinal's lament suddenly struck her ears.
“Where on earth did all that tax money go?”
“Was there any tax surplus?”
To her father's grumbling, Ariadne responded mechanically.
Cardinal de Mare spoke passionately as if it were quite natural.
“If you don’t have any leeway even after all that, are you a proper ruler? It’s been over 15 years since you started extorting money from the nobles, and recently as if that wasn’t enough, you’ve been trying to slyly impose indirect taxes on monasteries and shrines!”
Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto Gon what is Gon's. Under the motto written in the Meditations, no taxes were levied on church property in the Central Continent.
No, I didn't dare tax it.
No King dared to try to defy the arrogant and powerful Holy See and the Pope and see what would happen to him.
However, Leo III, like a puppy, was running around the periphery and making attempts to undermine the principle of tax exemption of church property.
Even in private homes, sericulture was widely practiced as a source of additional income in monasteries, and high taxes were imposed on it. Even in churches, some things had to be used, such as the 'well tax'.
“Anyway, this is the first time I’ve seen such a cheapskate. I wonder if he’s going to put Ducato in his coffin when he dies. Huh?”
Cardinal de Mare drank the remaining grappa in one gulp and looked at his daughter.
“Oh, I heard a guest has arrived.”
Ariadne smiled bitterly. Her father asked so quickly.
"Yes."
“Go and get it quickly. I’m sorry for being rude.”
“Then let’s step back.”
“Welcome, Ariadne.”
The guests waiting in the reception room of the de Mare family were the Baldessar siblings.
Coincidentally, they had heard the whole brawl that was going on in the hallway.
“...I’m sorry for my rudeness.”
Ariadne bowed her head with an apologetic expression as she entered the drawing room.
She felt sorry for her hunched shoulders.
Her gesture was an apology for leaving her guests unattended for so long, but it was also interpreted in several other ways.
“No, I had a good time.”
Raphael answered with a smile.
“The Cardinal’s love for his children is truly amazing.”
Julia stepped on her brother's foot.
“Brother, hurry!”
But Raphael was proud.
“What did I say that I shouldn’t have said? Tell me, Ariadne. Are we not in a position to talk about this?”
Ariadne laughed bitterly.
Although Ariadne was emotionally closer to Julia, there was no point in trying to get close to her since they had already seen each other in all sorts of ways.
It would be better to open up and feel better.
“That’s right, our father’s love for his children is great. Especially his love for his eldest son. If it were me, I would have kicked him out with a club.”
“We see eye to eye.”
Raphael smiled and held out his finger.
Ariadne also held out her index finger as if to signal for them to come forward.
Raphael tapped his index finger against hers as if greeting her.
“And we won’t be in the minority.”
“Honestly, if it were our house, Sir Ippolito would have been kicked out by his father.”
It was ambiguous whether Julia was elevating her friend's older brother by adding an inappropriate honorific before Ippolito's name or putting him down by saying that he would be kicked out of their house.
It was a clash of the desire to curse and the desire not to gossip about her friend's older brother.
“He went back to San Carlo after causing a scene at the university, and if I had done that, my father would have really kicked me out of the family register.”
“...Huh? What did Brother Ippolito do in Padua?”
This time it was Raphael's turn to be surprised.
“You didn’t know? Don’t your father know?”
Ariadne just blinked her eyes.
“What’s going on? First of all, I don’t know.”
"Oh my God."
Raphael clapped his hands cheerfully.
“Ippolito de Mare ran away from the University of Padua without taking his final exams. The Dean of Military Studies gave him two chances to take the exams instead, and when Ippolito struggled with those, he was even given the chance to take supplementary classes and write a report instead, but he didn’t show up for the supplementary classes and disappeared.”
"Yes?"
So does that mean he didn't graduate...?
“Dean Greco came to the classroom during the vacation and waited for Ippolito all day.”
Ariadne shook her head.
It was an unbelievable story, but it was an accident that Ippolito could very well have suffered.
“After sitting in an empty classroom for six hours, he turned pale and shouted, ‘This guy is beyond rehabilitation!’”
“He is truly a great educator, waiting for Ipollito for six hours during the vacation...”
Julia stuck out her tongue.
Ariadne relayed the version of the story she knew at home.
“My brother said that because he led a protest as a student representative and collectively refused to take the final exam, the final exam was completely eliminated from the academic calendar...”
“Hahahaha!”
Raphael burst into laughter after hearing Ariadne's story.
“He really did that?”
“Besides, he was supposed to be the one giving the graduation speech... I heard it was decided by a popularity vote.”
"Oh my God."
Raphael hit his forehead with his hand.
“This is an anecdote that clearly reveals Ippolito’s dreams and hopes.”
“...Is it all a lie? Is he just reciting what he wants to become?”
Julia asked from the side.
“He has a conscience. He listed all his wishes, but he modified them little by little to fit the reality.”
Raphael looked at Ariadne and said.
“The graduation speech is usually given by the valedictorian.”
Ariadne laughed in vain.
“I guess he felt guilty enough to lie and say he was the top student.”
“If my brother... said he was good at studying, my parents would have been suspicious first.”
However much Cardinal de Mare and the dead Lucrezia adored Ippolito, they were capable of obscuring even the slightest trace of the truth.
Although they can believe that their son is a good person even though he is running around acting like a bum, it is difficult to do so when it comes to matters that have quantifiable results.
Even a lie needs to be mixed with 70% truth to be persuasive, and a lie loses its power when faced with clear evidence.
“So, Brother Ippolito didn’t graduate?”
“That’s right. He hasn’t even completed all his credits, so he's not even a graduate... Well, I guess he's a dropout since he would have been expelled by now?”
Ariadne asked Raphael de Baldessar.
“I’m embarrassed to ask you this, but...”
You seem really unfriendly. Don't you think I'm some kind of evil woman who's trying to stab my brother in the back of the head?
“Could you please check my brother’s current academic record?”
But Ariadne's worries were completely unfounded. Raphael smiled and asked back.
“How long will it take for me to find out?”
Ariadne de Mare asked me a favor. I will make it happen.
“It’s not that urgent...”
“I'll find out as soon as possible.”
Raphael added.
“Oh, by the way, diplomas have already been issued to all graduates. Ippolito probably doesn’t have one.”
Ariadne smiled.
"Thank you."
Raphael immediately understood why Ariadne was seeking Ippolito's academic records.
And before he returned, if Ippolito lied, he would put in her hands the information she needed to counter him.
Raphael de Baldessar, you are a very hard worker.
After leaving Ariadne's drawing room, the Baldessar siblings walked down the hallway, chatting away.
“What’s going on here, it’s so uncharacteristic of you, brother?”
“Huh? What.”
“You hate being bothered more than anything in the world. It’s the first time I’ve seen you step forward and do something for someone else.”
Raphael was so absorbed in other thoughts that he couldn't properly hear his sister's story.
Instead, he blurted out a story that had been rolling around in his head.
“You know, I should have told you that I graduated at the top of my class.”
"What?"
“It’s so funny that Ippolito de Mare is babbling about when he was supposed to be giving the speech. I was valedictorian and I was the valedictorian of the class.”
“Why are you suddenly bringing this up? Have you been worrying about it all along?”
“If I said, ‘I graduated at the top of my class,’ I would have sounded too arrogant. Right?”
Julia was about to chastise her brother for his outrageous thoughts but decided to be more generous and just give him the answer he wanted to hear.
Because that was an insult too.
“You’re a bit unlucky. Even for your brother, you’re a bit unlucky.”
“Yeah, I guess it was a good thing I kept my mouth shut...”
Boom!
Raphael, who was not looking straight ahead because he was talking to Julia, bumped into someone ahead of him.
"Ah!"
“Whoa!”
The opponent he had collided with was larger than the slender Raphael and had long arms and legs.
Julia screamed in surprise as she almost bumped into her brother as he suddenly stopped in front of her.
Raphael, who was holding his sister's shoulder protectively, glared fiercely at the man in front of him.
“Are you looking ahead when you walk?”
The man across from him answered fiercely.
“Why are you in my house?”
It was Ippolito de Mare.
He was in the mood for gossip, and his son was in no mood to be a gossip partner.
But then his youngest daughter was right in front of him.
The Cardinal sat down at the bar and poured himself a glass of grappa, filling the bottom of a wine glass.
If the person sitting in front of him had been his eldest son, he would have poured two glasses, but now it felt awkward to hand over strong alcohol to his youngest daughter.
Ariadne handed her father some lukewarm water as usual.
It was the piece that was used to accompany the daytime drinking of the regent Cesare.
The Cardinal adjusted the strength of the liquor by adding lukewarm water, wondering where his young daughter had learned such things.
“The King has decided not to support the Third Crusade.”
The Cardinal muttered a few curse words, saying, "You're such a slut," and took a sip of his grappa.
Ariadne opened her eyes wide.
“Then how do His Majesty plan to deal with the heavy cavalry that came to the border?”
“Well. Is it just the heavy cavalry? I heard that the infantry is being supplemented now.”
Ariadne's expression hardened. This was not good.
“Then, are they relying solely on Prince Alfonso’s diplomatic capabilities in the Kingdom of Gallico?”
“That is, unless the Marquis Baldessar has some brilliant new plan that he has kept a secret from me, and that is in Carlo Palizio.”
The Cardinal shook his head.
“I don’t see any particular hole to jump out of. I wonder what the King is thinking.”
While the Cardinal was drinking in broad daylight and lamenting the state of his country, Ariadne pondered the differences between her past life and the present.
In her previous life, it was about half a year later when Leo III summoned Cardinal de Mare and asked for help.
By then, Philip IV had already paid most of the gold for the Third Crusade.
So Pope Louis was able to completely change his appearance and pressure Philip IV, and Cardinal de Mare was able to push Isabella into becoming the Crown Princess in return for moving the Holy See.
'But this time, that's impossible.'
Ariadne's chance to become a Princess was also blown away. It was heartbreaking.
She desperately wanted a sip of her father's liquor.
A glass of alcohol that goes down her esophagus and hits her brain would help her sleep without thinking.
'The only thing that has improved in this life compared to the last is the fact that the Gaeta region remains intact within the Etruscan kingdom...'
In an instant, the halo of light scattered across the tip of Ariadne's right hand emitted a diamond-like brilliance.
It was like fireflies were dancing on her fingernails.
She unconsciously glanced at the Cardinal, but he seemed to see nothing sparkling.
'What, did I do well?'
The halo gave no answer.
As Ariadne was thinking about the Golden Rule, the Cardinal's lament suddenly struck her ears.
“Where on earth did all that tax money go?”
“Was there any tax surplus?”
To her father's grumbling, Ariadne responded mechanically.
Cardinal de Mare spoke passionately as if it were quite natural.
“If you don’t have any leeway even after all that, are you a proper ruler? It’s been over 15 years since you started extorting money from the nobles, and recently as if that wasn’t enough, you’ve been trying to slyly impose indirect taxes on monasteries and shrines!”
Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto Gon what is Gon's. Under the motto written in the Meditations, no taxes were levied on church property in the Central Continent.
No, I didn't dare tax it.
No King dared to try to defy the arrogant and powerful Holy See and the Pope and see what would happen to him.
However, Leo III, like a puppy, was running around the periphery and making attempts to undermine the principle of tax exemption of church property.
Even in private homes, sericulture was widely practiced as a source of additional income in monasteries, and high taxes were imposed on it. Even in churches, some things had to be used, such as the 'well tax'.
“Anyway, this is the first time I’ve seen such a cheapskate. I wonder if he’s going to put Ducato in his coffin when he dies. Huh?”
Cardinal de Mare drank the remaining grappa in one gulp and looked at his daughter.
“Oh, I heard a guest has arrived.”
Ariadne smiled bitterly. Her father asked so quickly.
"Yes."
“Go and get it quickly. I’m sorry for being rude.”
“Then let’s step back.”
***
“Welcome, Ariadne.”
The guests waiting in the reception room of the de Mare family were the Baldessar siblings.
Coincidentally, they had heard the whole brawl that was going on in the hallway.
“...I’m sorry for my rudeness.”
Ariadne bowed her head with an apologetic expression as she entered the drawing room.
She felt sorry for her hunched shoulders.
Her gesture was an apology for leaving her guests unattended for so long, but it was also interpreted in several other ways.
“No, I had a good time.”
Raphael answered with a smile.
“The Cardinal’s love for his children is truly amazing.”
Julia stepped on her brother's foot.
“Brother, hurry!”
But Raphael was proud.
“What did I say that I shouldn’t have said? Tell me, Ariadne. Are we not in a position to talk about this?”
Ariadne laughed bitterly.
Although Ariadne was emotionally closer to Julia, there was no point in trying to get close to her since they had already seen each other in all sorts of ways.
It would be better to open up and feel better.
“That’s right, our father’s love for his children is great. Especially his love for his eldest son. If it were me, I would have kicked him out with a club.”
“We see eye to eye.”
Raphael smiled and held out his finger.
Ariadne also held out her index finger as if to signal for them to come forward.
Raphael tapped his index finger against hers as if greeting her.
“And we won’t be in the minority.”
“Honestly, if it were our house, Sir Ippolito would have been kicked out by his father.”
It was ambiguous whether Julia was elevating her friend's older brother by adding an inappropriate honorific before Ippolito's name or putting him down by saying that he would be kicked out of their house.
It was a clash of the desire to curse and the desire not to gossip about her friend's older brother.
“He went back to San Carlo after causing a scene at the university, and if I had done that, my father would have really kicked me out of the family register.”
“...Huh? What did Brother Ippolito do in Padua?”
This time it was Raphael's turn to be surprised.
“You didn’t know? Don’t your father know?”
Ariadne just blinked her eyes.
“What’s going on? First of all, I don’t know.”
"Oh my God."
Raphael clapped his hands cheerfully.
“Ippolito de Mare ran away from the University of Padua without taking his final exams. The Dean of Military Studies gave him two chances to take the exams instead, and when Ippolito struggled with those, he was even given the chance to take supplementary classes and write a report instead, but he didn’t show up for the supplementary classes and disappeared.”
"Yes?"
So does that mean he didn't graduate...?
“Dean Greco came to the classroom during the vacation and waited for Ippolito all day.”
Ariadne shook her head.
It was an unbelievable story, but it was an accident that Ippolito could very well have suffered.
“After sitting in an empty classroom for six hours, he turned pale and shouted, ‘This guy is beyond rehabilitation!’”
“He is truly a great educator, waiting for Ipollito for six hours during the vacation...”
Julia stuck out her tongue.
Ariadne relayed the version of the story she knew at home.
“My brother said that because he led a protest as a student representative and collectively refused to take the final exam, the final exam was completely eliminated from the academic calendar...”
“Hahahaha!”
Raphael burst into laughter after hearing Ariadne's story.
“He really did that?”
“Besides, he was supposed to be the one giving the graduation speech... I heard it was decided by a popularity vote.”
"Oh my God."
Raphael hit his forehead with his hand.
“This is an anecdote that clearly reveals Ippolito’s dreams and hopes.”
“...Is it all a lie? Is he just reciting what he wants to become?”
Julia asked from the side.
“He has a conscience. He listed all his wishes, but he modified them little by little to fit the reality.”
Raphael looked at Ariadne and said.
“The graduation speech is usually given by the valedictorian.”
Ariadne laughed in vain.
“I guess he felt guilty enough to lie and say he was the top student.”
“If my brother... said he was good at studying, my parents would have been suspicious first.”
However much Cardinal de Mare and the dead Lucrezia adored Ippolito, they were capable of obscuring even the slightest trace of the truth.
Although they can believe that their son is a good person even though he is running around acting like a bum, it is difficult to do so when it comes to matters that have quantifiable results.
Even a lie needs to be mixed with 70% truth to be persuasive, and a lie loses its power when faced with clear evidence.
“So, Brother Ippolito didn’t graduate?”
“That’s right. He hasn’t even completed all his credits, so he's not even a graduate... Well, I guess he's a dropout since he would have been expelled by now?”
Ariadne asked Raphael de Baldessar.
“I’m embarrassed to ask you this, but...”
You seem really unfriendly. Don't you think I'm some kind of evil woman who's trying to stab my brother in the back of the head?
“Could you please check my brother’s current academic record?”
But Ariadne's worries were completely unfounded. Raphael smiled and asked back.
“How long will it take for me to find out?”
Ariadne de Mare asked me a favor. I will make it happen.
“It’s not that urgent...”
“I'll find out as soon as possible.”
Raphael added.
“Oh, by the way, diplomas have already been issued to all graduates. Ippolito probably doesn’t have one.”
Ariadne smiled.
"Thank you."
Raphael immediately understood why Ariadne was seeking Ippolito's academic records.
And before he returned, if Ippolito lied, he would put in her hands the information she needed to counter him.
Raphael de Baldessar, you are a very hard worker.
***
After leaving Ariadne's drawing room, the Baldessar siblings walked down the hallway, chatting away.
“What’s going on here, it’s so uncharacteristic of you, brother?”
“Huh? What.”
“You hate being bothered more than anything in the world. It’s the first time I’ve seen you step forward and do something for someone else.”
Raphael was so absorbed in other thoughts that he couldn't properly hear his sister's story.
Instead, he blurted out a story that had been rolling around in his head.
“You know, I should have told you that I graduated at the top of my class.”
"What?"
“It’s so funny that Ippolito de Mare is babbling about when he was supposed to be giving the speech. I was valedictorian and I was the valedictorian of the class.”
“Why are you suddenly bringing this up? Have you been worrying about it all along?”
“If I said, ‘I graduated at the top of my class,’ I would have sounded too arrogant. Right?”
Julia was about to chastise her brother for his outrageous thoughts but decided to be more generous and just give him the answer he wanted to hear.
Because that was an insult too.
“You’re a bit unlucky. Even for your brother, you’re a bit unlucky.”
“Yeah, I guess it was a good thing I kept my mouth shut...”
Boom!
Raphael, who was not looking straight ahead because he was talking to Julia, bumped into someone ahead of him.
"Ah!"
“Whoa!”
The opponent he had collided with was larger than the slender Raphael and had long arms and legs.
Julia screamed in surprise as she almost bumped into her brother as he suddenly stopped in front of her.
Raphael, who was holding his sister's shoulder protectively, glared fiercely at the man in front of him.
“Are you looking ahead when you walk?”
The man across from him answered fiercely.
“Why are you in my house?”
It was Ippolito de Mare.
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