The butler Niccolo, who assumed that the reason the Cardinal frequently visited this farm was because of the third daughter, Ariadne, who was entrusted to him, advised the Cardinal.
If you don't have this kind of keen eye for detail when working as a close aide to someone in power, you'll quickly lose your job.
But the Cardinal paused for a moment and then answered.
'...There's nothing to do.'
He walked around the farm for a very long time.
It wasn't exactly the job of a top manager dispatched from the Holy See Office to meet with production managers, check inventory in the warehouse, or listen to the villagers' grievances.
He just wandered around the building where he thought his daughter was.
Close enough to feel the warmth of your heart, but far enough that the child will never see it.
The building that Cardinal de Mare was spinning around in was not the annex used as a dormitory for janitors where Ariadne grew up, but the main building used by Granny Gian Galeazzo and her family.
The Cardinal suddenly asked.
'Look at this, Nicolo.'
If you don't have this kind of keen eye for detail when working as a close aide to someone in power, you'll quickly lose your job.
But the Cardinal paused for a moment and then answered.
'...There's nothing to do.'
He walked around the farm for a very long time.
It wasn't exactly the job of a top manager dispatched from the Holy See Office to meet with production managers, check inventory in the warehouse, or listen to the villagers' grievances.
He just wandered around the building where he thought his daughter was.
Close enough to feel the warmth of your heart, but far enough that the child will never see it.
The building that Cardinal de Mare was spinning around in was not the annex used as a dormitory for janitors where Ariadne grew up, but the main building used by Granny Gian Galeazzo and her family.
The Cardinal suddenly asked.
'Look at this, Nicolo.'
'Yes, sir.'
'If you're so hungry you can't even eat, wouldn't you get angry if they put food in front of you and don't give it to you?'
'Yes.'
'Wouldn't that make you angrier than if I hadn't shown you anything to eat?'
'I guess so, right?'
'...Yes.'
The Cardinal said as he walked around the main building.
'Let's go back.'
He decided not to see his daughter. She was a child he could not bring back to the San Carlo mansion anyway.
'If you saw my face, you'd be angry, not like I was giving you medicine.'
The young boy Simon's constant fantasy at the monastery orphanage was that a handsome, beautiful, and well-dressed noble couple would show up, hug him, and take him home.
The part where the noble lady says, 'Oh, you are my son. I am sure you are well. I cannot take you away. I have abandoned you' was not included in the boy Simon's fantasy.
He couldn't stand that. Those were the days he could endure because he held onto his dream.
When your dreams and hopes are shattered, you no longer have the will to live.
He kept at least one thing in mind: Treat others the way you want to be treated.
By no means was it a way to convey parent-child affection, but it was the only way he had learned to respect others.
As the Cardinal boarded the silver carriage of the Holy See and set off, in a corner of the main building, Mrs. Gian Galeazzo glanced at the backs of the Cardinal and his party with a spiteful look.
'Hey!'
Grandma Gian Galeazzo called over a slightly older girl who was passing by and gave her some instructions.
'Take Miss Ariadne's things from the second floor to the third floor. After you take them out, give that room to our youngest.'
For almost a year, the Cardinal did not even look at his daughter once.
I don't know why you're bringing up such a topic, but I'm sure there's no way that little girl like that could nag her father.
'Don't prepare her meals separately, just give her what we eat. That all costs money.'
It was the beginning of a history of downgrades, with Ariadne being banished to the attic on the third floor, the maid's room on the first floor, and the farmhand's room in the annex.
Unaware of this, the Cardinal still came to the Bergamo farm the following spring. He circled the main house without his daughter.
Gian Galeazzo, whom they occasionally met, boasted that Lady Ariadne was eating well and doing well.
The Cardinal did not dare to go in and see the child, but he was not so cruel as to forget about it.
The wrinkles on his face as he walked in front of the main building were the weight of someone who could neither forget nor ignore something that was bothering him, but who was unable to resolve it and just kept putting it off.
“Ari, Ari. Are you okay? Are you okay!”
As soon as the darkness cleared from her vision, the first thing she saw was her father stroking her like a madman.
“Yes! Yes! The doctor is coming!”
From downstairs, the butler Nicolo's voice also rang out urgently. It was a voice that sounded ten years older than the one she had heard just a moment ago.
“What are you doing instead of running here right now?”
The Cardinal shouted at the top of his voice. Ariadne pushed her father's hand aside.
There was no need for a doctor. When his daughter moved, the Cardinal looked at her in surprise.
“Hey, are you awake?”
Ariadne looked up at the Cardinal with tearful eyes. Her vision was blurry and cloudy.
“...Father.”
Ariadne originally intended to reveal the secret of Ippolito's birth to the world, thereby breaking the link between Ippolito and Cardinal de Mare, who was on the verge of becoming a great success.
As it happened, Ippolito had left home early last summer after an accident at home with Bianca.
At that point, the Cardinal broke off relations with Ippolito, and from then on, her original plan was to develop the story so that Ippolito was no longer a member of the de Mare family.
Looking at the trend of public opinion, the Cardinal was also calculating whether to add a little more seasoning to it, such as the fact that he had known the secret of his birth from the beginning, but took pity on him and took him in, but was disappointed in her behavior and kicked her out.
But what use was all this calculation? Now it occurred to her that perhaps the Cardinal had really loved Ippolito.
If it is your downfall that you have chosen, you must embrace it and sink into it. No one can force you out of it.
'Should I save you, Father?'
No, do you really want me to save you?
But before she let go of the Cardinal altogether, she had a question she wanted to ask.
It was something she was usually too scared to ask.
Before everything went to ruin, just before everything was swept away, this one sentence came to mind, and she was able to say it out loud.
"Father."
She asked in a trembling voice.
“Do you love me?”
Cardinal de Mare's answer was immediate.
"Of course!"
The speed of the response was incomparable to that of Cesare when he asked for Isabella. Ariadne had no time to feel anxious.
Ariadne closed her eyes tightly and braced herself for an answer, but before she could even realize that she didn't need to brace herself, a strange sense of relief welled up in her chest.
The Cardinal hugged his daughter.
“Have you got a head injury? Why are you asking such ridiculous questions!”
It was a funny slap. Ariadne burst into tears. She had been crying all along, but there were still new tears waiting to come out.
When his daughter burst into tears, the Cardinal became flustered again.
“Why are you crying? Why are you crying again?”
His wrinkled hands continued to stroke Ariadne's back, who was now sitting up.
His daughter was too crying to answer, and all he could do was caress her like a baby.
Since he had never petted his child since she was a baby, his hand movements were awkward. Being physically intimate with his grown daughter was something he would never have done under normal circumstances.
Once he missed the timing of something he should have done when he was young, it was very difficult to do it again later.
And the warmth that would have been created when he cherished his heart in time as a child may have been missed forever.
But even belated warmth reached his heart. Even very late warmth enveloped and warmed the heart of a person who had grown cold.
The woman cried for a very long time, not befitting her age, with one hand in her arms and the other caressing his daughter who was being held in hia arms.
The doctor he called from downtown took some time to arrive, but the others were quicker.
When the commotion broke out in the house, the first outsiders to appear were the knights dispatched by Prince Alfonso.
They patrolled the outskirts of the mansion and forced their way straight into the house, despite Giuseppe's reluctance.
When they realized that the cause of the commotion was not an intrusion by an outsider, but the eldest son of this house, they did not try to suppress him right away.
However, he gradually took his place and drew a semicircle around the study.
The next person to appear was a middle-aged woman, Maria Galeazzo, hugging a large diary.
Ippolito did not know Maria Galeazzo's face, and she had not specifically said why she had come.
But the woman he had never seen before, standing there with a solemn expression, clutching a bundle of papers, definitely caught his eye.
Ippolito, although a fool, had one great sense, just like his mother. He had an intuition that if he didn't get out of here now, he might be in trouble.
While the Cardinal was distracted by Ariadne, Ippolito slowly backed away, his back against the corridor.
Then, as soon as he got close enough to the first-floor front door, he suddenly turned around and started running.
Giuseppe, who realized the situation belatedly, shouted.
“Catch Master Ippolito!”
But unfortunately, Ippolito's position was still that of 'Master'. The superior who had to sort out the situation did not have time to do so now.
It was impossible to give an order from Giuseppe saying, 'Bring that guy here by any means necessary, whether you beat him or kill him.'
Moreover, the most capable men here, the Black Helmet Knights, were not part of Giuseppe's command line.
Their scope of work was limited to 'mansion security' and the protection of important figures.
While the Knights were debating whether or not to intervene, Ippolito safely mounted his spotted horse and broke through the main gate of the mansion.
It was a day when Ippolito's luck reached the heavens.
Ippolito escaped, but the fact that the party involved did not show up did not delay the day when the truth would be revealed.
After hearing all of Maria Galeazzo's testimony, the Cardinal covered his face with both hands.
“My daughter, whom I did not raise, and another man’s son, whom I raised.”
He reminisced about Ippolito's childhood.
Although he left most of the parenting to Lucrezia and went out, as a father to a child living in the same house, he also had some brilliant moments.
He remembered the first day Ippolito called him 'Daddy'. He was a slow-talking child.
Young Ippolito was born prematurely, and Lucrezia wept, calling him a poor child.
But the word 'Dad' was the only one that came out quickly. Young de Mare felt joy and happiness exploding like firecrackers in his head.
This was his family, this was his future, this was the beginning of a lineage that would protect him and his family.
As a young father holding his first son in his arms, he envisioned a bright future for his child.
But it was all a vain dream. It was all a vain effort.
“Are Isabella and Arabella really my daughters?”
He rubbed his face in his hands.
Ariadne knew the answer. She held out Lucrezia's diary.
“...Would you like to read it?”
She added quickly.
“It might be a bit shocking.”
Isabella's birth was meticulously recorded in her diary.
She was worried that he would be ugly like Simon, but she was surprised to see that she had a high nose right after he was born. On the way to the Holy See for her first baptism, everyone complimented Isabella on how pretty she was, so Lucrezia was proud.
By the time Arabella was born, she had already grown up and had lost her small hobby of keeping a diary, but there were still records that allowed them to at least know that Arabella was indeed the Cardinal's child.
But instead of opening Pandora's box, the Cardinal silently looked at Ariadne.
Although he had a blank expression, his eyes were pitiful. In the end, Ariadne could not overcome her pity and confessed.
“Lucrezia never betrayed my father since she began living with you.”
Although she had attempted to betray but failed, she felt she didn't have to relay that to her father.
“Isabella and Arabella are our father’s daughters. Don’t worry.”
Ariadne knew that the best thing for her was for the Cardinal to suspect that Isabella and Arabella were not her children, and the next best thing for her was for the Cardinal to see the diary himself.
The fury against Lucrezia would only pierce the heavens and cut off Ippolito more cleanly, thus ending any future support for Isabella.
But she felt bad for her father, who was approaching things so calculatedly.
No one should ever have to read with their own eyes the record of the woman they loved their whole life, cursing them for being useless, unattractive, and horrible.
The Cardinal, who had been listening, pushed Lucrezia's diary away. However, it did not mean that he had no intention of ever looking at it again.
“See you later, later.”
The fact that they could endure without turning a blind eye to any dire situation was something that father and daughter had in common. He gulped.
“I have something to do right now.”
The temperament to tackle the task at hand first, no matter the situation, was also a trait shared by Ariadne and Cardinal de Mare.
“The council is tomorrow. Before that, we must explain to Ludovico what has happened, so that the vote on the Alemand amnesty and the strengthening of documentary rule will proceed as planned. There is no time to waste.”
He stood up from his seat.
“I must go and see Ludovico. If he will meet me.”
'Yes.'
'Wouldn't that make you angrier than if I hadn't shown you anything to eat?'
'I guess so, right?'
'...Yes.'
The Cardinal said as he walked around the main building.
'Let's go back.'
He decided not to see his daughter. She was a child he could not bring back to the San Carlo mansion anyway.
'If you saw my face, you'd be angry, not like I was giving you medicine.'
The young boy Simon's constant fantasy at the monastery orphanage was that a handsome, beautiful, and well-dressed noble couple would show up, hug him, and take him home.
The part where the noble lady says, 'Oh, you are my son. I am sure you are well. I cannot take you away. I have abandoned you' was not included in the boy Simon's fantasy.
He couldn't stand that. Those were the days he could endure because he held onto his dream.
When your dreams and hopes are shattered, you no longer have the will to live.
He kept at least one thing in mind: Treat others the way you want to be treated.
By no means was it a way to convey parent-child affection, but it was the only way he had learned to respect others.
As the Cardinal boarded the silver carriage of the Holy See and set off, in a corner of the main building, Mrs. Gian Galeazzo glanced at the backs of the Cardinal and his party with a spiteful look.
'Hey!'
Grandma Gian Galeazzo called over a slightly older girl who was passing by and gave her some instructions.
'Take Miss Ariadne's things from the second floor to the third floor. After you take them out, give that room to our youngest.'
For almost a year, the Cardinal did not even look at his daughter once.
I don't know why you're bringing up such a topic, but I'm sure there's no way that little girl like that could nag her father.
'Don't prepare her meals separately, just give her what we eat. That all costs money.'
It was the beginning of a history of downgrades, with Ariadne being banished to the attic on the third floor, the maid's room on the first floor, and the farmhand's room in the annex.
Unaware of this, the Cardinal still came to the Bergamo farm the following spring. He circled the main house without his daughter.
Gian Galeazzo, whom they occasionally met, boasted that Lady Ariadne was eating well and doing well.
The Cardinal did not dare to go in and see the child, but he was not so cruel as to forget about it.
The wrinkles on his face as he walked in front of the main building were the weight of someone who could neither forget nor ignore something that was bothering him, but who was unable to resolve it and just kept putting it off.
***
“Ari, Ari. Are you okay? Are you okay!”
As soon as the darkness cleared from her vision, the first thing she saw was her father stroking her like a madman.
“Yes! Yes! The doctor is coming!”
From downstairs, the butler Nicolo's voice also rang out urgently. It was a voice that sounded ten years older than the one she had heard just a moment ago.
“What are you doing instead of running here right now?”
The Cardinal shouted at the top of his voice. Ariadne pushed her father's hand aside.
There was no need for a doctor. When his daughter moved, the Cardinal looked at her in surprise.
“Hey, are you awake?”
Ariadne looked up at the Cardinal with tearful eyes. Her vision was blurry and cloudy.
“...Father.”
Ariadne originally intended to reveal the secret of Ippolito's birth to the world, thereby breaking the link between Ippolito and Cardinal de Mare, who was on the verge of becoming a great success.
As it happened, Ippolito had left home early last summer after an accident at home with Bianca.
At that point, the Cardinal broke off relations with Ippolito, and from then on, her original plan was to develop the story so that Ippolito was no longer a member of the de Mare family.
Looking at the trend of public opinion, the Cardinal was also calculating whether to add a little more seasoning to it, such as the fact that he had known the secret of his birth from the beginning, but took pity on him and took him in, but was disappointed in her behavior and kicked her out.
But what use was all this calculation? Now it occurred to her that perhaps the Cardinal had really loved Ippolito.
If it is your downfall that you have chosen, you must embrace it and sink into it. No one can force you out of it.
'Should I save you, Father?'
No, do you really want me to save you?
But before she let go of the Cardinal altogether, she had a question she wanted to ask.
It was something she was usually too scared to ask.
Before everything went to ruin, just before everything was swept away, this one sentence came to mind, and she was able to say it out loud.
"Father."
She asked in a trembling voice.
“Do you love me?”
Cardinal de Mare's answer was immediate.
"Of course!"
The speed of the response was incomparable to that of Cesare when he asked for Isabella. Ariadne had no time to feel anxious.
Ariadne closed her eyes tightly and braced herself for an answer, but before she could even realize that she didn't need to brace herself, a strange sense of relief welled up in her chest.
The Cardinal hugged his daughter.
“Have you got a head injury? Why are you asking such ridiculous questions!”
It was a funny slap. Ariadne burst into tears. She had been crying all along, but there were still new tears waiting to come out.
When his daughter burst into tears, the Cardinal became flustered again.
“Why are you crying? Why are you crying again?”
His wrinkled hands continued to stroke Ariadne's back, who was now sitting up.
His daughter was too crying to answer, and all he could do was caress her like a baby.
Since he had never petted his child since she was a baby, his hand movements were awkward. Being physically intimate with his grown daughter was something he would never have done under normal circumstances.
Once he missed the timing of something he should have done when he was young, it was very difficult to do it again later.
And the warmth that would have been created when he cherished his heart in time as a child may have been missed forever.
But even belated warmth reached his heart. Even very late warmth enveloped and warmed the heart of a person who had grown cold.
The woman cried for a very long time, not befitting her age, with one hand in her arms and the other caressing his daughter who was being held in hia arms.
The doctor he called from downtown took some time to arrive, but the others were quicker.
When the commotion broke out in the house, the first outsiders to appear were the knights dispatched by Prince Alfonso.
They patrolled the outskirts of the mansion and forced their way straight into the house, despite Giuseppe's reluctance.
When they realized that the cause of the commotion was not an intrusion by an outsider, but the eldest son of this house, they did not try to suppress him right away.
However, he gradually took his place and drew a semicircle around the study.
The next person to appear was a middle-aged woman, Maria Galeazzo, hugging a large diary.
Ippolito did not know Maria Galeazzo's face, and she had not specifically said why she had come.
But the woman he had never seen before, standing there with a solemn expression, clutching a bundle of papers, definitely caught his eye.
Ippolito, although a fool, had one great sense, just like his mother. He had an intuition that if he didn't get out of here now, he might be in trouble.
While the Cardinal was distracted by Ariadne, Ippolito slowly backed away, his back against the corridor.
Then, as soon as he got close enough to the first-floor front door, he suddenly turned around and started running.
Giuseppe, who realized the situation belatedly, shouted.
“Catch Master Ippolito!”
But unfortunately, Ippolito's position was still that of 'Master'. The superior who had to sort out the situation did not have time to do so now.
It was impossible to give an order from Giuseppe saying, 'Bring that guy here by any means necessary, whether you beat him or kill him.'
Moreover, the most capable men here, the Black Helmet Knights, were not part of Giuseppe's command line.
Their scope of work was limited to 'mansion security' and the protection of important figures.
While the Knights were debating whether or not to intervene, Ippolito safely mounted his spotted horse and broke through the main gate of the mansion.
It was a day when Ippolito's luck reached the heavens.
***
Ippolito escaped, but the fact that the party involved did not show up did not delay the day when the truth would be revealed.
After hearing all of Maria Galeazzo's testimony, the Cardinal covered his face with both hands.
“My daughter, whom I did not raise, and another man’s son, whom I raised.”
He reminisced about Ippolito's childhood.
Although he left most of the parenting to Lucrezia and went out, as a father to a child living in the same house, he also had some brilliant moments.
He remembered the first day Ippolito called him 'Daddy'. He was a slow-talking child.
Young Ippolito was born prematurely, and Lucrezia wept, calling him a poor child.
But the word 'Dad' was the only one that came out quickly. Young de Mare felt joy and happiness exploding like firecrackers in his head.
This was his family, this was his future, this was the beginning of a lineage that would protect him and his family.
As a young father holding his first son in his arms, he envisioned a bright future for his child.
But it was all a vain dream. It was all a vain effort.
“Are Isabella and Arabella really my daughters?”
He rubbed his face in his hands.
Ariadne knew the answer. She held out Lucrezia's diary.
“...Would you like to read it?”
She added quickly.
“It might be a bit shocking.”
Isabella's birth was meticulously recorded in her diary.
She was worried that he would be ugly like Simon, but she was surprised to see that she had a high nose right after he was born. On the way to the Holy See for her first baptism, everyone complimented Isabella on how pretty she was, so Lucrezia was proud.
By the time Arabella was born, she had already grown up and had lost her small hobby of keeping a diary, but there were still records that allowed them to at least know that Arabella was indeed the Cardinal's child.
But instead of opening Pandora's box, the Cardinal silently looked at Ariadne.
Although he had a blank expression, his eyes were pitiful. In the end, Ariadne could not overcome her pity and confessed.
“Lucrezia never betrayed my father since she began living with you.”
Although she had attempted to betray but failed, she felt she didn't have to relay that to her father.
“Isabella and Arabella are our father’s daughters. Don’t worry.”
Ariadne knew that the best thing for her was for the Cardinal to suspect that Isabella and Arabella were not her children, and the next best thing for her was for the Cardinal to see the diary himself.
The fury against Lucrezia would only pierce the heavens and cut off Ippolito more cleanly, thus ending any future support for Isabella.
But she felt bad for her father, who was approaching things so calculatedly.
No one should ever have to read with their own eyes the record of the woman they loved their whole life, cursing them for being useless, unattractive, and horrible.
The Cardinal, who had been listening, pushed Lucrezia's diary away. However, it did not mean that he had no intention of ever looking at it again.
“See you later, later.”
The fact that they could endure without turning a blind eye to any dire situation was something that father and daughter had in common. He gulped.
“I have something to do right now.”
The temperament to tackle the task at hand first, no matter the situation, was also a trait shared by Ariadne and Cardinal de Mare.
“The council is tomorrow. Before that, we must explain to Ludovico what has happened, so that the vote on the Alemand amnesty and the strengthening of documentary rule will proceed as planned. There is no time to waste.”
He stood up from his seat.
“I must go and see Ludovico. If he will meet me.”
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