Granville's estate

Saint-Etienne, June [-], [-].

This day is the first Sunday in June.

If there is a better day for the pupils who are confined to the boarding school of St. Etienne than on Wednesday and Sunday of the week - when Mrs. Walker's shop is open to the pupils of the week, they can Shops plucking up whatever they fancy, as long as they have pocket money -- and if it's even more exciting, it's probably the first Sunday of every month.

The life of St. Etienne boarding school is very regular, following the rules of the old aristocratic era. It strictly arranges all aspects of students' daily life, including but not limited to their beliefs, studies and emotions.Guided by strict rules and regulations, the first Sunday of each month was established as a very important day when students were assembled and after the routine liturgy all students were required to sit down Write a letter to my family in front of the teachers and supervisors - it is said that this is the rule set by the founder of the school, the purpose is to prevent students from being depressed because they have not seen their parents for a long time and have nowhere to vent their emotions become ill.

If you can only write letters to your parents, the first Sunday of each month is not enough to be a day that every student will look forward to. What the students really look forward to is actually after handing the written letter to the teachers, They can get the letters sent by their parents from the school supervisor-in addition to the parents' teaching and longing for their children, these letters often contain pocket money for the children.

The emergence of this phenomenon is actually due to a typical rule of the old aristocratic era in Saint-Etienne-in order to ensure the ideological purity of the students, all letters sent from outside Saint-Etienne must be handed over to the school first. After they checked and ensured that there were no words that would damage the children's unformed beliefs and thoughts, they would send them back to the students on the first Sunday of the next month.It's hard to say how many irresponsible parents this uncomfortable rule gives them an excuse not to write a letter to their children for a year, but in general, except for a few lucky ones who get letters from home every time Except for the children and a small number of unfortunate students who have probably been left behind by their hedonistic parents, most of the students can receive letters from their own homes and a small sum of money in the letters every now and then. It is enough for them to go to Mrs. Walker's shop to buy some gadgets they like after receiving them; so it is not surprising that the first Sunday of each month has become the most anticipated day for students.

Unfortunately, Calliste Duis was one of those unfortunates whose parents had presumably forgotten him, and since he entered the boarding school in St. Etienne, he had only received two letters from his father. letters, one of which reprimanded him for coming into conflict with the senior students of Saint-Etienne; as for his mother, she was like any French lady who left the baby to a nurse after it was born. Likewise, until Callister was old enough to be treated as an adult, she probably would not have thought of another child being sent to a boarding school far from Paris—even if it was her only son.

All along, it was the old butler of the family who wrote letters to the heir who was sent to boarding school in place of Callister's parents.The old butler would send Callister a letter every month or two, telling him a few words about his family, and inserting two or three five-franc silver pieces into the letter as pocket money for him— Such a figure is not worth mentioning in the eyes of the supervisors, but it is not small among the students. The pocket money most students get each time is about a few silver coins of fifty sous, and the total generally does not exceed five Francs; if anyone received a five-franc piece in silver, the students would immediately spread it all over the place, and if it was a gold piece, they would even take turns at mealtimes!

Such days lasted until the famous grape failure of [-]—even though the students were not allowed to leave the boarding school, they still learned of this natural disaster from the letters from their parents— In just a few months, several students were missing in Saint-Etienne. It is said that they all went bankrupt due to the family's misjudgment of the grape harvest that year, and they could no longer afford the cost of boarding school and had to be interrupted. It was also in December of that year that Callister's old housekeeper sent him a letter for the last time, telling him vaguely that "something happened at home".Since then, he seems to have been forgotten by everyone in the family, and he has never received any letters from the outside world—whether it is from his parents or from the old housekeeper.

Therefore, on this Sunday in June [-], Callister, who had known for a long time that there was no possibility of his letter in the hands of the proctor, sneaked away from the side door of the chapel while the teachers were not paying attention. Get out—he doesn't want to sit there stupidly writing letters like other students. Anyway, even if he writes them, his parents don't know if they will receive them, and if they will open them to have a look after receiving them!

The weather in June was just right. After slipping out of the chapel, Callister ran into the small garden of Saint-Etienne, found a mulberry tree with dense branches in a secluded place very skillfully, climbed on it, and lay down comfortably. on the branch.The dense branches and leaves obscured his figure. If he didn't stand under the tree and look up carefully, it would be impossible to find that there were people on the tree. This is the best way to hide yourself from being discovered, and to enjoy the warm wind and warm sunshine.

The place he had chosen was seldom visited by people, so that he could enjoy the peace and quiet of the garden alone; He heard someone come in through the bushes and sat down on the grass under the tree where he was.

Which short-sighted guy also ran here?And making noises to disturb his sleep?

Annoyed, Callister glanced down through the gaps in the branches and leaves, and found that a black-haired student who barged in was a year or two younger than him, and looked familiar; he looked at it for a while Afterwards, he realized that it was the little guy named Louis in the next class. Like some unlucky people, although they got greetings from home, their parents forgot to include their most anticipated pocket money in the letter.

For some unknown reason—maybe he wanted to scare Louis with a sudden noise when he wasn’t paying attention—Callister watched the people under the tree with great interest, and watched as Louis found him. After sitting down on a piece of clean grass, he didn't rush to pour out the pocket money in the envelope and count how much it was like other students, but first looked at the letters from home.

Louis read the letter for a long time. Callister, who had been watching him from the tree for a long time, impatiently laid himself back on the branch, folded the letter paper and put it aside, then turned the envelope upside down to let the inside The coins fell out.

"50 centimes, 50, 20, 20, 10 centimes."

Louis picked up the coins poured out of the envelope and counted them in a low voice. There were five silver and copper coins in total, adding up to one and a half francs. It was the time when he could receive such an amount of pocket money basically every month—it has to be said that his father was very considerate for him, and the pocket money he gave included both half a franc with a larger face value and 20 francs with a face value Smaller 10 centimes in silver and [-] centimes in copper; this arrangement was presumably so that children in boarding schools would not have to give away a full franc when they only needed one or two centimes.

After counting how much pocket money his family sent him this time, Louis began counting on his fingers how much he would spend in Mrs. Walker's shop this time.

"7 sous for red ink, 4 centimes for quill, 8 sous and two centimes for blue ink, 8 centimes for candy, 12 centimes for pocketknife, total... total..."

A sou is equal to 5 centimes, but Mrs. Walker's shop does not have a unified standard for pricing. There are both sous and centimes prices. The little guy became confused after counting: "Total... Well, twenty-three sous altogether?"

The number seemed wrong, so he could only count again from the beginning: "Red ink..."

"Red ink is 35 centimes, blue ink is 42 centimes and comes with a quill, fennel sugar is 8 centimes per bag, and a knife is 12 centimes." Just as Louis was about to recalculate, a somewhat impatient voice came from him A voice came from overhead, "It's 19 sous and 2 centimes. If you buy another bag of sweets, it's 21 sous. You don't even need change."

"Oh!"