In addition to Condé, the Duke of Luxembourg and the Duchess of Bouillon were said to have been so worried in Bordeaux that she almost collapsed and died, but with the king's express indication, both the Inquisition and the High Court's verdict came quickly, and Father Le Sage and his accomplice Lavoizan, as well as the reckless Bonnard, did not even return to Paris, and were executed directly in Bordeaux, and for this reason, Eleho went to Bordeaux and passed by his former boss and mentor Barras。

After passing through several cities in a row, Barras realized that the preferential treatment he received in Marseille was not extreme, and could even be said to be less than the standard of a papal envoy—with or without him, they were neat, wealthy, and orderly, and not ornate veneers specially displayed to them—and he was keenly aware that, while France was still a Catholic country, the influence of the pope had diminished to its lowest.

For example, the mayor of Marseille would confess that he was not qualified to make the whole city run for him, for example, the Baron of Pliva could pass on a difficult case to him, a papal envoy, without the slightest qualification, and for example, the Huguenots, with whom he had traveled half of France, and who had questioned the officers and officers who escorted them, half-puzzled, half-questioning— What he meant was that if these were pagans who were unwilling to convert, or to die, or even to escape, then why didn't they simply kill these abominable prisoners?

The answers varied from those who said that they were to obey the king's will, others who said that the Huguenots would work for France in Orleans, and others who said that their faith was protected by the Edict of Nantes, and that Louis XIV's latest order restricting movement would not lead to death.

These three answers seem similar, but they are different, the first is that Barras is the most common people, who are ignorant and blindly obedient, except that they are blindly following not the church but the king here, the second because of profit, and the third type of people who are the most hated by the church, who think and are sane enough to avoid falling into unnecessary fanaticism.

But either way, to the eyes of any prince in Rome, the cardinal prince is more odious than heresy, and there is no one who claims to be the most devout believer in God, the most loyal warrior of the Church, while at the same time thinking of replacing the Church with more sinful things - especially when Barras sees it...... When even the poorest peasants were able to live like an old man, he developed a strong sense of jealousy.

This kind of thinking is not surprising, because when a person sacrifices a lot of precious things just to be able to leap to another high branch, and after many years, when he looks back and finds that the branch he abandoned has become stronger and more abundant, it will breed a vicious juice, after all, no one wants to do all their efforts in vain, or even on the contrary, this is human nature, and there is nothing wrong with it.

It's just that reality doesn't change because of Barras's curse, and all the way he comes and sees what people can see in a thriving new world, as if he had left not twenty years, but two hundred years, and even if he was close to Paris, he couldn't recognize the city he had spent so many years in vain— It resembles a crown of green velvet, with white marble doors rising over each avenue that runs through the city of Paris, and of course, the most popular way is the Queen's Avenue, which connects the Boulevard du Queen, which connects the Louvre with the Place de la Bastille.

As Barras's carriage went, he felt like he had returned to Rome, because Rome had long ago built small three- or four-storey buildings along the streets, all of which were uniform in form and style, with smooth roads full of people and glass vitrines – note that it was not yet a bazaar, but it was already home to many restaurants, ready-to-wear shops, jewellery and antique shops, wigs and barber shops, and so on...... The envoy who came to greet him proudly said that after the king had rebuilt Paris, he thought that it was not reasonable to open markets in only a few places, and that when the number of visitors to Paris was increasing, the concentration of shops would not only increase the pressure on a certain region in vain, but also cause many negative accidents and accidents, so he issued a special decree that in Paris, Versailles, and several nearby cities, people could choose the places they liked to do business, regardless of neighborhoods and trades.

But the emergence of such demand can only mean one thing, and that is that the purchasing power of the French is growing rapidly, otherwise even in Paris, there would not be such a situation where shops are everywhere in sight - why did Paris have a fixed market in the past? It was because one or two such markets would satisfy the whole Parisians, and now, multiples, or even dozens, of similar markets appeared in front of Barras like mushrooms after the rain, and every shop had customers coming and going, the restaurants were overcrowded, and even the roadside vendors were almost overwhelmed.

Even if Barras had no financial talent, he knew that France was entering a virtuous circle. It was not uncommon in history for Louis XIV to launch a war against Flanders and the Netherlands, and it was believed that even if the young king could win a few victories and occupy a few cities, he would eventually go bankrupt because of the bottomless abyss, and there were many kings who needed generations to pay off their debts to the bankers with minerals and taxes.

Moreover, Barras also heard that Louis XIV actually mortgaged Fontainebleau to support the war against the Netherlands, only the Louvre was only needed to mortgage the Louvre - at that time, Ballas and the Roman priests had the same idea, they just had to wait quietly for Louis XIV to hang himself, who knew that Louis XIV would carry such a shackle, all the way forward, with an incomparable luck and courage, to pick off the two brilliant jewels of Flanders and the Netherlands.

Thinking that even Leopold I was waiting for France to collapse on its own - Barras smiled bitterly, if Leopold I knew that he had fallen into such an embarrassing situation, he would have to be the first to strangle the Sun King in the swaddling clothes of the strong, even despite the threat of the Grand Duke of Transylvania and the Ottoman Turks.

But who in this world could not know the prophet, not even he, and Barras came to Paris, because the king had returned to Versailles, and he had decided to stay here for a few days before he would ask to see his majesty, and he did not know if it was because he was hesitating, like a guilty man who does not want to face his victims, or like a sad loser who is forced to bow his knees to those whom he once despised......

He went to the church of St. Justine, where the Inquisition of Paris was located, and Ballas was its owner when he left, and when he returned as a guest, he was surprised to find that the priests and monks who came and went there were no longer a few familiar faces with him, and that Elelius had been "cleansed" after he had left—he entered the church with mixed feelings, and then walked out with a mixture of interest.

A black-clad priest with a fuchsia sash around his waist (unique to the bishop) walking down the street couldn't help but cast curious glances, but they almost all had their own things to do, and they only looked a few more times, but Barras saw more than others, and he found that there were more women walking the streets of Paris than anywhere else, and they weren't all prostitutes as one might think—prostitutes didn't have the same firm steps and piercing eyes as they did, and Barras saw a few witches— They weren't dressed in strange shapes, they weren't crazy, they weren't unkempt, they just wore a maid's apron over their pretty skirts.

But what kind of person would have a few witches to be servants?

Barras endured a long time before he inquired about a priest who passed by, and the priest first glanced at his bishop's robe, and saluted, and then said, "Your Excellency," he said respectfully, "the ladies you have seen are nurses in the King's Hospital. ”

"King's Hospital?" asked Baras, "King's Hospital?"

The question made the clergyman look embarrassed, of course, theoretically his soul belonged to the church, but his body belonged to the king to the letter, only to a ...... It should be the Bishop of Non-Lancey that this kind of behavior is akin to transgression.

The concept of hospitals has been around for a long time, as early as ancient Rome, when people knew that they should go to the temple to pray for pharmacies and herbs, but at that time, temples were mostly only for elders and soldiers. But since the rise of Christianity, believers have often brought sick people of their faith back to their homes for treatment—most of whom have been hunted down and tortured for their faith. At that time, the homes of these believers were called "hospices."

In 313, when Christianity was legitimized by Constantine the Great, such asylum became proliferated, and they took on many responsibilities, such as caring for and treating the sick, as well as the homeless poor or pilgrims, and gradually their name changed from asylum to almshouse, and gradually changed to shelter the poor rather than mere healing.

It wasn't until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that the term "hospital" began to appear in these places, but in England they were called "the house of God", in Germany they were called "the house of the Holy Spirit", but in France, how did they become the "house of the king"?

Ballas, the Grand Inquisitor of the Inquisition for thirty years, has seen and tried many people who practice witchcraft or black mass out of fear of sickness and death? He knows too well how fragile and easily controlled people can be when they are weak and in pain—when they are healed in the "King's Hospital", will they thank God for giving them a good pope, or will they thank God for giving them a good king?

Louis XIV wanted to completely eliminate the influence of the Church in France.

He can now understand Clement X, who is in his eighties, and does he still have to watch the Roman Church completely lose its glory in France, and see that France also has an additional "head king"?

——————

A carriage passed in front of Baras, and Barras's bishop's uniform and his strange expression of gnashing teeth caused the people in the carriage to look back frequently, until the carriage turned the corner, and the man turned around, rubbed the handle of his cane, and said thoughtfully: "That Mr. Bishop looks a little strange. ”

"Probably provincial. The Brandenburg-Prussian envoy opposite him replied, but he did not care who his little master saw: "Your Highness," he said, "I seem to have said that in Versailles only Louis XIV could carry a staff." ”

"I'll remember to leave it in the wagon. "Frederick Wilhelm von Hohenzollern, the eldest son of the Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia, reluctantly laid down his cane set with a great sapphire, and his hobbies and habits were rapidly imitated as soon as the prestige of the Sun King spread from Paris to all of Europa—just as when Spain was a mighty sea giant, when all the courts were black, and now France is like a flower, and people can't wait to dress up and enjoy it.

For a young man like Frederick, of course, he would have preferred the new fashions of Paris and Versailles, and who doesn't love brilliant colours, silky fabrics, and glittering gems?

Even if he didn't have it, he wouldn't have been able to take it to Versailles.

"Though I know it shouldn't," asked Frederick, "but you've seen the Grand Lord, the Grand Lord...... What is your appearance and disposition?"

The envoys were able to understand Frederick's feelings. In any case, this highness is at his youngest and most amorous, and he must be curious about his future wife, if all goes well.

"She is a rather respectable lady," said the envoy cautiously, "as for her appearance, Your Highness, you should soon see her, but as far as I know, the Bourbons have an enviable countenance. ”

"But her mother was a Tudor, and her grandmother was a Habsburg," Frederick gestured and made a big chin, "I'm worried...... You know, even the Habsburg princesses, people say that their faces have been kissed by angels - I think the angels must have been too hard...... will make their faces sunken enough to fry in them. ”

"That's a bit mean. The envoy had to say.