Life of Being a Crown Prince in France - Chapter 1538 - 1444: Queen Mary's Arrangement
Paris.
In the first-class dining hall of the France Engineering Design Institute, Queen Mary glanced at the fish soup in front of her, then looked up at Louis XVI sitting opposite her:
“So, Joseph told me to exercise more, and I just jogged here from the Petit Trianon Palace.”
The King nodded in satisfaction: “That’s not a short distance. Thank Jesus, your health is much better than before.”
“Especially after going to Brest.” Queen Mary said in a boastful tone, “That place is simply paradise. There are beautiful beaches and humid air, and crabs and razor clams everywhere. I went beachcombing every day.
“By the way, do you know what beachcombing is?”
“Uh, what’s that?”
“Accepting the gifts of nature by the sea! It’s really tremendously fun…”
More than ten minutes later, Louis XVI was poking at the roasted oysters on his plate with his fork, and asked rather absentmindedly, “So it’s just catching crabs and shrimp like the fishermen do?”
“And octopus, catshark, barnacles, too many to count. And then we grill the freshly caught seafood right there on the beach, with the sea breeze blowing, watching the sunset dye the sky red—oh, it’s wonderful!”
“Sounds… not bad.” Louis XVI answered perfunctorily, while his mind was already flooding with ideas for improving the gearbox of the forging machine.
Queen Mary seemed to have long anticipated that her husband would react like this. She wasn’t discouraged in the slightest; instead she leaned forward a bit and smiled: “Do you know what an automatic can seamer is?”
Louis XVI’s fork stopped: “Sounds like some sort of mechanical device.”
“You guessed right.” Queen Mary recalled the seamer knowledge she had studied on the way back, and said, “It’s a machine used to seal cans. Truly magical.”
“Oh? Tell me about it.”
“You know, cans have to be isolated from the air. Well, they say it’s to prevent bacteria from contacting the food inside the cans. In the past, they used tin soldering to seal iron cans, but the solder contains lead, which would cause people eating the canned food to suffer poisoning.”
Louis XVI nodded: “So the seamer is…?”
“This kind of machine can seal iron cans without solder!” Queen Mary said, picking up two napkins and folding their edges together. “Like this—there’s a little projection here, you clamp the iron can onto an iron post, and use a Steam Engine to drive it to rotate.
“And on the upper side there is a uniquely shaped wedge-shaped iron block that presses down on the edge of the tinplate…”
By the time she finished, Louis XVI’s eyes were already shining: “What a genius design! It makes such clever use of mechanical structure and the ductility of tinplate. Where did you see this machine?”
“Brest, at the Saint Malo coastal cannery.” Queen Mary deliberately slowed her tone, “They also have steam oil presses there. It only takes a dozen minutes or so to press several big barrels of very clean rapeseed oil.
“By the way, Joseph said that machine was originally used to compress excrement to improve the urban environment.”
She then went on to describe the structure of the oil press. Louis XVI could no longer be bothered to eat; he kept asking about the details of the machine over and over, repeatedly praising the elegance of the design.
As a result, this lunch lasted a full hour and a half.
Queen Mary perfunctorily went through the post-meal courtesies, then rose and took her husband’s arm, continuing: “Yes, Paris also has canneries, and there might be oil presses too, but there’s another huge machine, and I swear you can only see it in Brest.”
“What’s that?”
“A Steam Battleship. A warship that can still run at high speed even when there’s no sea wind.”
Ever since he took his post at the Engineering Design Institute, this was the first time Louis XVI had taken a day off from the workshop. Instead, he stayed in his lounge listening to his wife talk about the Decisive.
“This truly is the greatest engineering creation in the world!” The King exclaimed sincerely. “I really want to see it with my own eyes.
“You’re right, Brest must be an interesting place.”
Queen Mary smiled like a smug little fox: “Not just see it—you can even take part in designing that ship.”
At her words Louis XVI sighed: “But I can’t just leave Paris whenever I like… Maybe if Brest were to host some major diplomatic event someday.”
Once he said it, he felt even more deflated. Facing Brest is the Atlantic Ocean; there are no neighboring countries there, so where would any diplomatic activities come from?
He grumbled inwardly that the only possibility would be a rebellion breaking out there, and after it was put down he could go to soothe the people… Forget it, better that nothing like that happens.
Queen Mary glanced at his expression, then leaned to his ear and said, “If someone were to take on the King’s duties in Paris for you, you could live freely as you pleased.”
“Huh? Someone’s planning a coup?”
Queen Mary gave him a reproachful glare: “You really know how to joke. I mean we could have Joseph serve as Regent.”
Louis XVI did not hesitate even half a second; he immediately nodded: “That really is a good idea. It’s just that I’m not old enough yet, so it might not be entirely proper.”
Queen Mary proudly lifted her chin: “We just need to put on a play together. In fact, I’ve already been making arrangements since I was in Brest.”
…
In a spacious suite in the south wing of the Palace of Versailles, Duke Levis unfolded a copy of the Paris Commercial News by the window in the afternoon sunlight.
A story below the front-page headline caught his interest—
[The renowned master of medicine Dr. Perti has published his latest research paper in the journal Natural Science, proving that the head of freshly caught forkbeard seabream can effectively treat typhus. This discovery is of great significance in the history of medicine…]
Duke Levis put down the newspaper and couldn’t help but marvel at the rapid development of medicine in recent years.
When he was young he had followed his father onto the battlefield; he remembered that back then, once a soldier was wounded, it was basically nine chances out of ten that he would die. But now the mortality rate of wounded soldiers had dropped to less than twenty percent.
Some time ago he heard the servants chatting, saying that even in some remote villages, they could use a latest “inoculation” technique to cure smallpox, that extremely dangerous disease. And for a child to be “inoculated” once cost only a mere 5 Sous.
Well, he still couldn’t quite tell the difference between immunity and treatment.
Just as he was sighing to himself, his personal valet hurried in and bowed: “Sir, my lady has returned.”
Duke Levis quickly stood up and went with the servant to the main entrance, just in time to meet his wife, whose face showed obvious fatigue.
“My dear, you’re back.” He stepped forward to embrace his wife, then asked eagerly in a low voice, “On this trip, did you manage to deepen Her Majesty the Queen’s trust in you?”
Queen Mary had returned from Brest to Paris two days ago, but it was only after the Duchess had completed her handover of duties that she was able to come home.
The royal Maid nodded: “I did indeed gain Her Majesty’s trust this time… it’s just that she seems to trust me a bit too much.”
