Palace of Versailles, France
Spring 1846
Eight years changed people quietly.
Not in the dramatic way stories often liked to describe. There was no single moment where everything became different overnight. Most of the time, change settled into people slowly, little by little, until one day they realized they no longer carried themselves the same way they once had.
It showed in posture.
In voice.
In the pauses between words.
Even silence changed with age.
Versailles had changed too.
The palace remained magnificent, of course. Marble halls still stretched endlessly beneath painted ceilings, and sunlight still poured through towering windows during the day. Servants moved through the corridors with the same polished discipline they had maintained for generations, and guards still stood watch with rigid posture and unreadable expressions.
But the Empire filling those halls no longer resembled the France of eight years earlier.
It had grown larger.
Heavier.
More confident.
