99 - Pieces of the Broken Glass Slipper
Shattered Glass Slipper Shards Chapter 99
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“All I know is that I should remain quietly silent in times like these. If only to conceal my own ignorance. Feigning shyness, that is.”
At that, she shakes her head exaggeratedly, denying my words. Her manner of dispensing advice is rather haughty.
“Oh, that’s not a good way to handle things. Silence is worse than saying nothing at all. I, for one, would chatter away and reveal everything. Who knows if one’s personality is sharp, or as gentle as a spring breeze, or perhaps fickle? Unless you’re a Vagus (wandering fortune teller), no one would know.”
“Then what do you wish me to do?”
“First, we must clear up any misunderstandings. The messy gossip about you is blocking our eyes and ears. Like a prejudice, if you will.”
Her face is filled with a burning desire to thoroughly win over a naive young girl.
“Gossip? Misunderstandings? I’m hearing all of this for the first time.”
I widen my eyes as if hearing it for the first time, biting my lip as if at a loss for what to do with the unfamiliar words.
Madame de Guillaumin studies my expression very carefully. Then, after a moment, she slowly opens her mouth and asks, testing the waters.
“Really, you don’t know anything? You haven’t heard? That’s strange. If you were with Madame de Chatoul, you couldn’t possibly not know. She’s rarely been so forthcoming with gossip. Why wouldn’t she have told Miss Bischwartz what we all know?”
Ah, so that’s why she approached me. I stare at Madame de Guillaumin, slowly blinking my eyes.
The appetizer seemed rather short, but it was ultimately bait for a delectable main course.
Isn’t it obvious from the way Madame de Chatoul’s name naturally flows from my lips? That’s why she’s subtly intimidating me by mentioning gossip about me.
So that must be why I feel the gaze of someone who must be the Empress on one cheek. No, it’s not just her. Other noble ladies are also pretending to converse while sneakily glancing over here.
“I’ve only watched plays with her so far. A comedy with knights and ladies.”
“You haven’t had any particular conversations? There are few who enjoy talking as much as Madame de Chatoul. Even His Majesty the Emperor acknowledges that fact.”
The Madame wants me to talk about the conversations I had with Chatoul. Among them, she seems particularly eager to know if Chatoul might have made any mockery of the Empress.
That’s why she’s subtly steering the conversation in that direction, hoping to exploit any weakness I might easily reveal, having been intimidated by my encounter with Pulcher.
Because an ordinary fool would surely make up stories to curry favor with the Empress.
“I’ve mostly just been observing. Madame de Châteauroux’s palace is filled with a different kind of beauty than here.”
But I pretend to be a clueless little girl and slowly begin to list only the things I saw at Chatoul’s palace.
What dress she wore, what jewels she adorned herself with, what food she ate, and so on, just useless things, on and on.
“Oh, is that so? That’s truly unfortunate. Perhaps Miss Bischwartz was too young to have had various conversations?”
The Madame soothes me with a soft voice, as if feeling sorry for me. At the same time, she’s subtly inducing me to feel resentful of such treatment.
She acts as if it’s nothing much, but her tone is quite insistent. As if hoping for a spontaneous slip of the tongue that a young girl unfamiliar with high society might inadvertently utter.
Judging from Madame de Guillaumin’s attitude, it seems the Empress wants to have the opportunity to boast to everyone about how elegant the quill pen sleeping in her drawer is.
If only to cleanly wipe away the pride that has been mired in the mud. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have invited me and started talking to me like this.
In other words, she wouldn’t have meticulously prepared various gestures and then watched me as if observing me.
“But I was simply happy. Now that I think about it, the sculptures displayed in the Imperial Palace are truly magnificent. I’ve become interested in art since visiting the exhibition with my aunt. Do you happen to know whose works they are?”
But what if the subject wears a smiling face and gives only vague answers? Or what if she changes the subject and makes the listener lose interest?
What would one feel if she cleverly and cunningly wagged her tongue as if she knew and didn’t know, and then excitedly chattered away as if she were the only one enjoying herself?
The answer to that came easily. Madame de Guillaumin’s buttocks were repeatedly rising and falling. Well, wouldn’t she be, since she’s not fulfilling her duty as a clown?
Her anxiety must have doubled just from the fact that the fans held by the surrounding ladies were slowing down noticeably. The Empress’s fan, which I glanced at sideways, wasn’t even moving at all.
Unfortunately for them, Chatoul had never once mentioned the Empress when she was with me.
Not because she was afraid of rumors spreading—if that were the reason, she wouldn’t have even thought of teasing her with the Emperor—but because she wasn’t someone to be wary of enough to care about.
That’s because, to Chatoul, the Empress was a woman who was only remembered when she was faced with her, not even an adversary.
How could a woman whose receiving the Emperor’s favor is now decorated with distant memories be a rival in love? Moreover, Chatoul always has the upper hand in the direction of power according to physical desire. Though it is fun to tease her.
Therefore, she probably thought it would be better to pay attention to the latest jewelry designs, shoe decorations, or intriguing gossip, rather than paying attention to her. That’s much more fun, too.
As long as the Emperor’s favor was with her, even the Empress’s family couldn’t dare to touch her, so it was a presumptuous thought she could have.
But the Empress was different. Before returning, she was always burning with hatred for Chatoul, not forgetting the shame she had received and continuing to dwell on it.
You can tell from the fact that she often complained to the people around her, ‘That impudent girl and her husband will one day use their three-inch tongues to carve up my heart and kill me.’
This poor griffin—the animal engraved on the Empress’s seal—waited and waited every day for the day when she could repay the insults she had received in full.
She knew very well that the old Emperor could not wield his lower body forever. Because time is fair to everyone.
Therefore, even when gossips used Chatoul’s words to satirize her, she endured deeply as if it were nothing.
‘Someday they will realize how eagerly their tongues have burned, preoccupied with something so trivial. Then they will know the word shame.’
In the past, the Empress showed a completely weak attitude until Chatoul was forcibly brought down by the Crown Prince. It wasn’t for nothing that the saying ‘Pulcher touches the Emperor’s feet, but the whore strokes the sun’s head’ came about.
So if the aging Emperor hadn’t lost the ability to rule the empire—he often lost consciousness in his later years, causing the Crown Prince to quell rebellions—Chatoul wouldn’t have been exiled, and high society would have become more exciting.
But now, Chatoul was forced into seclusion by the Emperor and had lost most of the favor and power she had received from him.
People laughed that the Baroness of Flanders would take away a significant portion of the benefits she had enjoyed, and that she would never again recklessly wag her tongue and ridicule nobles.
Hadn’t Chatoul herself shown how stupid a monarch could become when infatuated with a young girl? Thanks to that, the Empress was able to have time to retaliate against Chatoul earlier than before.
However, this retaliation was only plausible in name, and from the perspective of a spectator, it was nothing more than a boring fight.
What excitement is there in uttering harsh words against the other party by mobilizing all of one’s connections?
Writing letters in elegant handwriting and elegantly picking fights was also yawn-inducing. But it would be an extremely serious battle for those engaged in the war.
If Chatoul and the Empress were ordinary commoners, the aspect of the fight might have progressed more interestingly. They would have grabbed each other’s hair and thrown each other to the ground just for making eye contact, or spewed thick saliva and uttered harsh curses.
They would have been able to do vulgar things like slapping or scratching cheeks, or biting and drawing blood from wrists without hesitation. They would have said that expressing emotions with the body is a natural thing, so what is there to be ashamed of?
In fact, even a few decades ago, loyal knights would engage in trial by combat.
Many men shed their noble blood on the floor of the dueling arena for the honor of the lady they served.
This was another festival that people in high society could enjoy, and people came to watch with a bottle of wine each time such a fight broke out. Since it was difficult to easily taste such entertainment, they decided to simply enjoy it.
Therefore, there was no infighting among the spectators. They simply waited with a fair mind for the birth of the victor.
Gossipers called this battle a sacred fight combining romance and barbarism. It was inevitable, since the winner could seize both honor and legitimacy.
Considering the secret reward given to the knight who won the fight by the noblewoman—such as a room key—it was understandable.
However, as the fight continued, there were many cases of physical disability or loss of life. They exchanged a moment of glory for the future.
Of course, a certain amount of money was paid as compensation, but it was woefully insufficient for young men who could no longer work as knights.
Naturally, the knight’s family was outraged, and the Emperor, who received fierce protests, officially banned duels.
So women had no choice but to shift the battle to isolating their adversaries from high society through gossip and slander.
Even so, it cannot be denied that revealing the ‘truth’ with followers standing behind them like maids and tasting a ridiculous sense of superiority is a pleasant violence that only those with cunning tongues can enjoy.
Because no one doesn’t know that the gutter is more noble than the honor of a woman engulfed in shameful gossip.
Above all, I had never seen a case where cunning tongues, greedy desires, and cowardly actions were treated better than noble beliefs and honesty as much as at this time.
Also, someone who lacks patience and is easily deceived is revered as a greater hero than a knight who has won a war.
This was to perfectly seize the victory in the ‘seesaw battle’ where the more people who agree, the more likely you are to win.
In any case, the Empress was trying to announce her well-being through me, who Chatoul had most recently met, and at the same time, she was trying to announce the start of the fight in a way that was so orthodox that it was upright.
This may be a shining star in terms of her honor, but it is very tiring for subordinates, so the result seemed very obvious. So people like Madame de Guillaumin suffer.
