In the first week of November, she began her nationwide speaking tour.
The first stop was Lille, in northern France.
This was an industrial hub of France, filled with coal mines and textile mills.
Furina stood on the steps of the city hall, addressing several thousand workers.
She used no manuscript, no complex sentence structures, and no flowery language.
She simply stood there, using the simplest words to speak the truest things.
“How many hours do you work a day?”
“Fourteen!” someone shouted from the crowd.
“What can your wages buy?”
“Only enough to buy bread!”
“And what about your children’s tuition?
Your parents’ medical bills?
What will you do when you grow old?”
The crowd fell silent.
“The answer to these questions is that the system is at fault, the government is at fault, and those Pantalones who only care about making money while ignoring whether others live or die are at fault!”
Furina’s voice echoed across the square.
“We must change!
We must replace them!”
Someone shouted from the crowd.
“Replacing people is only the first step,” Furina said.
“After we replace them, we must also replace the system.
Replace it with a system that allows those who labor to be rewarded;”
“Replace it with a system that allows the diligent to have dignity;”
“Replace it with a system that allows every person in France to have enough to eat, a roof over their head, and access to medical care!”
The applause was thunderous.
The second stop was Nantes, the largest port city in western France.
Furina stood on the docks, facing several thousand longshoremen and sailors.
“Do you know?
Half of the goods exported from France every year are shipped out from this port.
But what about you yourselves?
After moving cargo all day, what can you afford to buy with the money you earn?”
“Not enough for anything!” someone shouted from the crowd.
“That’s right.
Because the value you create is taken away by those people.”
“They sit in offices, doing nothing, yet they take away ninety percent of the fruits of your labor.
This isn’t business, this is exploitation!”
“Then what should we do?” someone asked from the crowd.
“What should we do?
Redistribute.
Let those who labor receive the rewards they deserve, and let those who exploit pay the price they deserve!”
“Well said!” the workers in the crowd waved their fists.
The third stop was Bordeaux, a famous wine-producing region in France.
Furina stood in a vineyard, facing several hundred grape farmers.
“The grapes you grow and the wine you brew are sold to Paris and abroad, where a single bottle can sell for dozens of francs.
But what about you?
How many francs can you earn at the end of the year?”
“Less than a hundred!” someone shouted.
“Where does the rest of the money go?”
“Taken by those wine merchants!”
“What did those wine merchants do?
Did they grow the grapes?
Did they brew the wine?
Did they do anything of value?”
“No!
They just sat there, waiting to collect money!”
“So, if one day the government passes a law to limit the profits of wine merchants and keep more money for you, would you be willing?”
“Then are you willing to support me?”
“Support!
Support!
Support!”
Furina spent two months traveling across the country.
She went south, crossing forests, climbing over mountains, walking across plains, and traversing rivers.
She had been to the most prosperous cities and the most remote villages.
She had met the wealthiest merchants and the poorest farmers.
Everywhere she went, she gave a speech.
Unlike her speeches within the party, when facing the public, she never used complex sentence structures or flowery language.
The message she conveyed was clear and explicit:
“This country needs a monumental change!”
For Furina, this two-month journey was also a profound field study.
She saw the other side of France—a side that the newspapers would not report on, that politicians would not discuss, and that the Pantalones would not care about.
She saw a little girl digging for food in a garbage pile.
The girl was about six or seven years old, thin as a stick, with a dirty face, but her eyes were still bright.
Furina squatted down and asked her name.
The little girl looked at her without answering, just reaching out to point at the bread in her hand.
She gave the bread to the little girl.
The girl took it, turned, and ran, but stopped after a few steps, looked back at her, and then disappeared into the alley.
She saw an old man lying on the side of the road, covered by a piece of torn newspaper.
His eyes were half-closed, his lips cracked, and his breathing was weak.
Furina squatted down and touched his forehead; it was frighteningly hot.
She wanted to call a doctor, but the old man shook his head and said in a voice that was barely audible:
“No need, miss.
I’ve lived long enough.”
She stood on that street for a long time, until the old man’s breathing stopped completely.
She saw a room crammed with over a dozen people, sleeping on the floor, on tables, and on cabinets.
They were a family who had come from the countryside to Paris to look for work, but after searching for three months, they had found nothing.
Their money was spent, their housing was lost, and they could only cram into this borrowed room, waiting for an opportunity that they didn’t know would ever come.
She saw a man standing on a bridge, staring blankly at the river.
She walked over and spoke to him.
The man told her that he had worked in a factory for twenty years, but the factory went bankrupt last month, and he was unemployed.
His wife had taken the children back to her parents’ home, and his house had been repossessed by the bank.
He didn’t know where to go or what to do.
“And you?” the man asked her.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to see,” Furina said.
“To see what is actually wrong with this country.”
The man looked at her and suddenly smiled.
There was no bitterness or anger in that smile, only an indescribable exhaustion.
“Miss,” he said.
“You are a good person.
But good people cannot save this country.”
Furina looked at him.
“Maybe not,” she said.
“But at least I am trying.”
Two months later, Furina returned to Paris.
She stood before the window of her apartment, looking out at the city, and was silent for a long time.
“I have seen thousands upon thousands of French faces,” she said to Clemenceau.
“On their faces, there is the panic of a lost child.”
Clemenceau looked at her without speaking.
“They don’t know where they will be tomorrow, they don’t know if their children will be fed, and they don’t know if they will be thrown out on the street when they get old.
They are like lost children, unable to find the way home.”
“I want to give them a home.”
…
As Furina’s reputation grew higher and higher, and her policies became more resonant, the Conservative Party could finally no longer sit still.
Those politicians, who had previously fought among themselves endlessly, united in an unprecedented way.
They closed their doors and held a three-day secret meeting to discuss how to deal with this twenty-year-old actress.
“She is a madwoman,” someone said.
“She is a dreamer,” someone said.
“She is a threat,” someone said.
Finally, they reached a consensus, which was to use the most vicious means to destroy her reputation.
The next day, the Conservative Party’s newspapers began to attack Furina in a massive wave.
They said she was a whore who relied on her body to climb the ladder, claiming she seduced Clemenceau with her beauty.
They said she slept with different men every night, and that her magic was obtained by selling her flesh.
They dug up every play she had ever performed in, took screenshots out of context, and claimed they were all obscene performances.
They even fabricated rumors that she had illicit affairs with all the male members of the Radical Party.
These filthy words were printed in the newspapers and plastered all over the streets and alleys of Paris.
When Furina saw those newspapers, she was sitting in her apartment’s living room eating breakfast.
Madame Havima was shaking with anger, Miss Sebeleida cried out, and Lord Uther stood up without a word, saying he was going to settle the score with those newspaper offices.
Furina stopped him.
“No need,” she said, her voice very calm.
“But Mistress…”
“No need,” she repeated.
“Let them write.
Let them curse.
Let them say all the vicious words they want.”
She put down the newspaper and took a sip of tea.
“Because I know that those who have truly seen me, those who have truly listened to my speeches, will not believe these things.”
Furina was right.
The workers in Lille who had listened to her speeches, the longshoremen in Nantes who had met her in person, the grape farmers in Bordeaux who had shaken her hand, and the Agrarian Party representatives in the south who had talked with her.
When these people saw the slander in the newspapers, their first reaction was not suspicion, but anger.
“Bullshit!”
A miner in Lille threw the newspaper on the ground.
“When Ms.
Furina came to us, she stood in the wind and spoke for two hours without drinking a drop of water.
She is a whore?
Would a whore run to a coal mine to smell coal dust?”
“I have lived for fifty years,” an old farmer from the south said.
“I have seen too many politicians.
They come, they talk, they leave, and they leave nothing behind.”
“Only Ms.
Furina came with a notebook.
She wrote down every word I said.”
“Would someone like that be the kind of person they say she is?”
The counterattack began.
Those who had been moved by Furina organized themselves spontaneously, posting notices of rebuttal on the streets and alleys.
Workers passed around Furina’s policy platform in factories, and farmers discussed the content of her speeches in the fields.
Those who had previously had no interest in politics began to take the initiative to campaign for Furina.
The Conservative Party’s slander not only failed to destroy Furina, but instead let more people know her name.
“The harder they curse, the more famous I become,” Furina said to Clemenceau.
“They don’t understand that in this era where everyone is lying, the truth is the most powerful weapon.”
Clemenceau looked at her, his eyes full of gratification and emotion.
“You are smarter than any politician I have ever met,” he said.
“I am not a politician,” Furina smiled.
“I am just an actress.
And what an actress is best at is seeing through lies.”
Looking at the number of views makes me feel discouraged.