“Furina!
Furina!
Furina!”
Hundreds of thousands of people shouted this name simultaneously, their voices shaking the heavens.
Flags waved in the air, hats were tossed toward the sky, and people embraced one another, weeping, laughing, and shouting.
Those children who had lost fingers in factories, those elderly people waiting for death in alleys, those shells of people queuing at the doors of relief shelters—at this moment, they all became the same person.
A person who believed that tomorrow would be better.
Gallieni stood below the steps, watching all of this, his eyes feeling a bit hot.
He remembered that old woman from twenty years ago; she had sat in the ruins holding her dead cat and said, “It’s over, everything is over.”
If she were still alive, if she were standing here right now, seeing the light in the eyes of these hundreds of thousands of people, what would she say?
He turned his head and looked at the heavy machine guns around the square.
He suddenly felt that those gun barrels were not aimed at the crowd, but at that great fire from twenty years ago.
They were aimed at the Titans of the German, aimed at all the enemies of this country.
Not the enemies on the outside, but the ones on the inside.
The enemies that let the old woman sit in the ruins waiting for death.
The enemies that let children lose their fingers in factories.
The enemies that let the elderly die on the roadside covered in newspapers.
His fingers loosened from the hilt of his sword and clenched into a fist.
Furina stood on the podium, looking at that sea of people below.
Her eyes were a bit moist, but she did not cry.
She thought of Grandpa Grandpa Pierre, thought of him saying, “There is light in your eyes.”
She thought of Clemenceau, thought of him saying, “You standing there is enough for them to go on living.”
She thought of those children who had lost fingers in factories, those elderly people waiting for death in alleys, those shells of people queuing at the doors of relief shelters.
She thought of the man standing on the bridge, who said, “A good person cannot save this country.”
She did not know if she could save this country.
But she knew that, at this moment, in this square, there was light in the eyes of hundreds of thousands of people.
That light was hope.
She took a deep breath; the winter air was cold, but very fresh.
In the distance, the Seine River flowed quietly, its surface reflecting the gray sky and the bare plane trees on both banks.
Further away, the rooftops of Paris rolled and undulated, white smoke rose from chimneys, and the church bell towers loomed in the mist.
This city, this country, these people.
She turned around and walked down from the podium.
Clemenceau stood on the steps waiting for her, the old man’s eyes were red, but he tried hard to maintain his composure.
“You spoke very well.”
His voice was a bit hoarse.
“Better than any inauguration speech I have ever heard.”
“I only told the truth.”
“Sometimes, telling the truth is the most powerful weapon.”
Clemenceau reached out his hand, and she took it.
That hand was very aged, covered in wrinkles and calluses, but the grip was very firm.
“Now, the real battle begins,” Clemenceau said.
Furina nodded.
She knew.
This speech did not just reach the ears of the hundreds of thousands of people in the square.
It spread to the outskirts of Paris through Furina’s magic, and reached every household in France through the major newspapers.
It reached the sweatshops and the dilapidated hotels.
In a textile factory in Lille, workers gathered around a tattered newspaper, listening to someone who could read recite it word by word.
When reading, “Those monopoly capitalists’ children wear silk, eat steak, and ride carriages to school, while your children lose their fingers in front of machines,” a young female worker suddenly burst into tears.
Her left hand had only three fingers; the other two had been crushed in the machine.
No one had ever spoken up for her, and no one had ever thought those two fingers were worth remembering.
But today, someone had.
It reached the city shelters and the habitats of the homeless.
In an abandoned warehouse in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, over a dozen homeless people huddled together, listening to an old veteran read the newspaper.
They were illiterate; most people couldn’t even write their own names.
But they understood.
“The only thing to fear is fear itself.”
A young man repeated this sentence over and over again.
He hadn’t eaten for three days, but his eyes lit up.
It reached the central mountain range of the towering mountains.
In a small village in the Auvergne mountains, several shepherds sat around a fireplace, listening to the village chief read the newspaper.
They had raised sheep their whole lives and sold wool their whole lives, but they had never seen the people who bought the wool.
Those people were far away in Paris, sitting in warm offices, buying a horse with their annual income.
“Our top priority is to redistribute social assets.
The land occupied by landlords must be redistributed.”
When the village chief read to this point, his voice trembled a little.
The shepherds looked at each other, and someone asked:
“What does this mean?”
“It means,” the village chief said, “from now on, the money we make from selling the sheep we raise will no longer be snatched away by others.
The hillsides where we graze our sheep will no longer be taken away by landlords.”
Everyone was silent for a long time.
Then, an old shepherd suddenly stood up, walked to the door, and pushed open the window.
Outside was a valley covered in heavy snow, moonlight shining on the snow, a silvery white expanse.
It reached the lonely and depressed southern plains.
In a vineyard in Provence, Valde stood on a ridge, reading the newspaper to several hundred farmers.
After finishing, he folded the newspaper and placed it against his chest.
“I have written down every word she said in my notebook,” he said.
“She said we need to pay off debts, to pay off the debt France owes the South.
She said those landlords plant nothing, do nothing, yet hold the land deeds and snatch away more than half of our harvest every year.”
“I don’t know if she can do it.
But at least, someone is willing to say it.”
An old farmer squatted on the ground, smoking a pipe, and was silent for a long time.
“I have lived for sixty years,” he said.
“This is the first time I’ve heard a president say that Southerners are people too.
The first time I’ve heard someone say that those landlords are robbing us.”
It reached…
it reached…
Every place where there were French people.
Everyone was holding their breath, listening and reading.
Because they knew that from now on, their fates would be linked with countless strangers they had never met.
The female worker who lost her fingers in Lille, the old farmer who had grown grapes in Provence his whole life, the young man who hadn’t eaten for three days in a Paris warehouse, and the shepherd who had grazed sheep his whole life in the Auvergne mountains…
From today on, they were compatriots of the same person.
They were the people of the same country.
They were the creators of the same future.
A reporter sitting below the stage wrote down this paragraph in his notebook:
“When a major historical moment occurs, people often fail to realize its importance.
Because the influence of an individual on history is negligible.
If President Furina happens to play an indispensable role, it is that she has allowed the collective will of the French people to be vividly manifested in her.”
He finished writing this paragraph, looked up, and watched the blue figure on the steps.
She was turning around, waving to the crowd in the square.
Those heterochromatic eyes were shining in the sunlight, the left eye as deep as the sea, the right eye as clear as ice.
He suddenly felt that perhaps history was not created by those great figures.
Perhaps history was created by the silent majority, those children who lost fingers in factories, those elderly people waiting for death in alleys, those shells of people queuing at the doors of relief shelters.
And all Furina did was to make them believe: they themselves were history.
The cheers in the square continued.
The voices of hundreds of thousands of people converged into a torrent, rolling and surging over Paris.
In the distance, the Seine River flowed quietly.
Further away, the rooftops of Paris rolled and undulated, white smoke rose from chimneys, and the church bell towers loomed in the mist.
This city, this country, these people.
A new era was beginning.