Chapter 8: The Source of Confidence

At the school gate, the crowd was stunned by Lionel’s retort, which was immediately followed by a tsunami of uproarious laughter. This irony, hardly novel in the 21st century, acted like a bombshell in the 19th, sending nearly everyone who heard it into a frenzy of mirth. Even the carriage drivers, disregarding their masters’ decorum, could not help but laugh, causing several horses to trip and nearly collide.

It was not until a booming voice rang out that the crowd regained their composure: "This is the Sorbonne! Have you all lost your senses?"

The speaker was none other than Henri Patin, the Dean of the Sorbonne, a celebrated classicist and expert in Latin and Greek literature. He was a stern old man with a shiny, high forehead and white hair at his temples, standing beside his carriage to scold the assembly. As a dean and scholar, his annual income exceeded 50,000 francs, not including the yields from his farms and wine cellars. Consequently, he traveled in a four-seat Berlin carriage drawn by two horses, featuring a black walnut cabin and leather seats; all the copper fittings were polished to a gleam, and the carriage bells were even gilded.

The crowd quickly scattered like birds and beasts, rushing into the classrooms at the sound of the lecture bell. Lionel and Albert also intended to leave, but were stopped by Henri Patin: "Albert, Lionel, the two of you—come to my office after class." As the dean and the instructor in charge of classical literature for the Faculty of Arts, Patin knew them both. The two could only hang their heads and respond sheepishly, "Very well, Mr. Dean!"

Upon reaching the classroom, neither had the heart to listen—especially Albert, who spent the time alternating between drooping his head, shaking it, and glaring at Lionel. His expression shifted unpredictably, turning from fierce to dejected. Lionel ignored him, though he, too, could not focus on the lecture, to the point where the professor had to remind him twice not to daydream: "Leon, you Alpine bumpkin, you have no right to space out in this sacred classroom!"

Well, in a 19th-century university, this hardly qualified as a "personal attack," and no student would dream of reporting a professor for such a remark. Over the past two days, Lionel had firmly resisted Albert’s bullying—not just because he refused to endure such treatment, but because, after carefully combing through the original owner’s memories, he had discovered a crucial fact: Albert de Rohan, despite being a nobleman’s son, was a paper tiger, lacking the true strength he projected.

His father, Vicomte Edmond de Rohan, was a staunch pillar of the "Royalist" faction and had once served as a deputy minister in the Ministry of Finance under the MacMahon administration. However, following the Republicans' landslide victory in the new Senate elections last January and President MacMahon’s subsequent resignation, the Republican system in France was firmly established, and the Royalists were pushed out of power. This meant the Rohan family had lost its political influence; Vicomte Edmond had even left Paris to hide away at his estate in Burgundy, hoping to avoid the gaze of the newly arrived, wealth-hungry parvenus.

Albert was not the eldest son; he had two older brothers and two sisters. Not only was he unlikely to inherit the title (which, in any case, was not recognized under the Republic), but his share of the property would be extremely limited. That was why he could only ride in a "Buggies," a relatively cheap light carriage, rather than more luxurious and prestigious ones like a "Coupe" or a "Cabriolet." His ostentatious behavior was not just a habit from when his family was in power, but also a form of self-preservation—after all, there were plenty of students at the Sorbonne now with stronger backgrounds and more prestige than his own. He needed to show everyone that even if his family had been pushed away from the center of power, they still possessed formidable strength. This was evident from his choice of targets for bullying: the Alpine bumpkin and bookworm, Lionel. He lacked the confidence to bully anyone else!

Furthermore, the timing of when he began bullying Lionel was quite telling—it happened right after his father was kicked out of the Ministry of Finance. Albert suddenly shifted from picking fights with everyone he disliked to focusing on Lionel and other poor students. It was clearly a way to establish authority by preying on the "weak." The original owner of Lionel’s body had been a proud, cowardly, self-pitying, and impractical soul, which was why he had been inexplicably bullied by Albert for over a year.

But who was Zhang Chaohua, the soul now inhabiting this body? He was a seasoned literary youth who had grown up reading the works of the famous writer Zhang Chao. How could he not see through the nature of such a bully, whose ferocity was merely a mask for inner weakness? Now that even Albert’s Vicomte father was keeping a low profile, Lionel did not believe Albert could truly do anything to him. After all, although he came from a minor provincial official’s family, his admission to the Sorbonne meant he had one foot across the threshold of the French "quasi-elite." If anything were to happen to Lionel, the Rohan family would likely be turned upside down by the Republican upstarts sniffing for an opportunity.

This was the source of Lionel’s confidence. Albert’s behavior confirmed his suspicions—the boy was likely more terrified than he was. If they were "sent to the principal," Lionel’s father was far away in the Alps and would at most send a letter of apology; Albert’s father, however, would likely cut his younger son’s allowance. He might even lose the "Buggies" altogether...

While Lionel and Albert were "harboring their own schemes," Lionel’s submission letter had already been carried by Paris’s efficient "internal postal system" to the desk of Gabriel Mariel, owner of the *Clamor*. As the owner, editor-in-chief, and lead contributor, he had used his keen market intuition, unscrupulous writing style, and every marketing trick in the book to make the *Clamor* the leader among all cheap tabloids, selling 120,000 copies per issue in Paris alone.

The *Clamor* was a thorn in the side of every respectable gentleman in France and had been repeatedly targeted for bans by the Church. According to one priest obsessed with updating his "Black List," "To read one issue is to sign a contract selling your soul to Satan!" Yet, thanks to Gabriel’s vast connections and social maneuvering, the *Clamor* always managed to escape disaster. Usually, it meant a few days of "suspension for rectification," followed by a quick return to "business as usual."

Gabriel reviewed hundreds of submissions daily, most of which he glanced at once before tossing into the wastebasket at his side. He roughly tore open the envelope signed "An Honest Parisian" and pulled out two pages of manuscript. He scanned them nonchalantly at first, but then his eyes widened as if he had discovered a great treasure. By the time he finished reading, Gabriel collapsed into his office chair, and after a long moment, he shouted: "Pierre, you damned lazy donkey, get in here at once!"