The Fox of France

Chapter 417: Punishment

If it could be so easy to pass through this, Joseph would truly thank God sincerely. However, there are hardly any cheap deals in this world. Sure enough, Joseph spoke again:

"Joseph, you spent quite a sum of the family's money to gain the support of those fellows, didn't you?"

Upon hearing this, Joseph knew things weren't looking good. Whenever Joseph brought up money, there were seldom pleasant conversations.

"Joseph, I..."

"The folks from the Paris High School might just want to insert a Paris High School queen for you without directly asking for money. But Mr. Lavoisier, heh, I know him very well. Given your relationship with him, can he help you like this without money? And Mr. Lavoisier has made quite a fortune these years, his aspirations have also risen significantly. Heh, it wouldn't cost much to bribe him in the past, but now, to bribe him, the price must be high, right? Tell me, how much did you give him?"

Joseph knew that his elder brother managed the family's finances, and these matters couldn't be hidden from him. As long as he investigated, he would surely find out. So, Napoleon never even thought of being able to hide anything from Joseph in this matter. Now that Joseph asked, Napoleon had no choice but to confess honestly. Although Napoleon also understood that honesty pays off, even behind bars.

"What? You prodigal son! You actually gave him so many benefits? That old scoundrel, being so greedy now, he should really go to the guillotine. Hmm, Napoleon, and you, you're just outrageous, it's exasperating! How can you be so foolish, not even knowing how to haggle? If it were me, I could at least cut down half of that price. If it were an Indian, I could cut down another half! My goodness, you really don't know how to negotiate. If Lucien were in your place, he'd do better than you!"

"Lucien refused to participate, he's worried..." Napoleon said.

"Lucien, withholding information is complicity. You've been in the Ministry of Truth for so many years, don't you understand this basic principle? Either you inform me immediately upon discovering this conspiracy, or you do your best to assist Napoleon. Either choice is better than vacillating like this! You're such a fool!" Joseph scolded.

Lucien glanced at his elder brother, then at his second brother, and didn't dare to speak.

"Lucien, you're to write a self-criticism, five thousand words, it must touch the soul, and submit it to me tomorrow!" Joseph said.

"Okay." Lucien immediately agreed. Anyway, he had already prepared many templates for self-criticisms, so what's another one?

"Napoleon, you've caused huge financial losses to the family, so you'll also be punished. From today onwards, half of your dividends will be deducted as a fine until this loss is compensated for."

Napoleon calculated in his mind and felt that canceling half of the usual dividends, although a considerable amount, wouldn't really affect his standard of living much, so he quickly expressed willingness to accept the punishment.

"As long as problems can be solved with money, they're not problems." Napoleon quietly reassured himself.

"Furthermore, Napoleon, since you're already a member of the French Academy of Sciences, you can't just take the Academy's allowance for free. So, you'll also have to participate in some of the Academy's work," Joseph added.

"No problem, no problem," Napoleon hurriedly agreed.

"According to the rules, you should still be in your probationary period. But breaking the rules, you fellows actually made this guy a full-fledged academician directly—I served as a probationary member back then!" Joseph expressed some dissatisfaction, "Regardless of whether you're officially one now or not, you'll have to do what probationary members do!"

One important duty of probationary members was to review papers. Each year, many papers were submitted to various journals affiliated with the Academy of Sciences. Reviewing these papers was a substantial and challenging task. Therefore, most of the official academicians were reluctant to do it. Of course, considering there were many probationary members in the Academy of Sciences, and if Napoleon was really too busy, he could always ask those folks from the Paris High School to stand in for him. So, Napoleon felt that there shouldn't be anything he couldn't handle.

"That's not a problem. Serving the Academy of Sciences is something I've been longing for," Napoleon hastily replied.

"Alright, I'll arrange for you to review papers for the 'Mathematics' journal," Joseph said.

Overall, Napoleon was quite satisfied with the outcome of tonight. He felt that although Joseph was sometimes annoying, he was still his brother after all. Today's matter could be considered a typical example of raising a glass high, then putting it down gently, with only three cups of wine as punishment, and it wouldn't happen again.

Joseph acted swiftly, and just two days later, Napoleon received a large stack of papers waiting to be reviewed, sent to him by others.

Anyway, Napoleon didn't have much to do at the moment, so he considered this another form of leisure. So, Napoleon began to review the papers earnestly.

Upon reading, Napoleon understood why no official academicians wanted to do this and why only "probationary members" would handle such matters. If the probationary members weren't eager to become official members as soon as possible, they certainly wouldn't want to do this work either. Because the quality of these papers, well, most of them weren't really up to par. Many of these so-called "papers" were riddled with flaws to the extent that even Napoleon felt they should be submitted to the jokes section of "The Sun" newspaper.

"This is totally pseudoscience!" Napoleon slammed one paper on the table, then picked up his pen to write comments.

"This 'paper' has the problem of using other equivalent propositions as axioms in the first paragraph. There are obvious logical flaws in notes 1, 5, 7, and even obvious calculation errors in notes 3 and 6.

Review result: Not passed.

Suggestion: The author should re-study primary school mathematics."

After dealing with the first paper, Napoleon picked up the second one and, after reading for a while, began to write comments again:

"The process of argumentation is fine, although somewhat verbose and tedious, but at least there are no errors. It addresses a very important problem, and the conclusion drawn is also very correct. However, is it meaningful to reinvent the wheel? Is it necessary to spend a huge amount of space to prove a theorem that a Greek person proved in one-fifth of the space?

Review result: Not passed.

Suggestion: After completing compulsory education, the author should continue reading."

Basically, most of the papers were like this. After a whole day of reading, Napoleon hadn't found anything worth his attention, but his belly was sore from laughing.

Casually throwing another pseudoscientific paper aside, Napoleon saw a very thick paper underneath, titled "Principles of Geometry and a Rigorous Proof of the Parallel Postulate," and the author was an unknown person named Lucien Evans.