For a while after that, Paris seemed to settle down. The barricades were gradually taken apart, and some of the shops that had shut their doors reopened. Apart from there being fewer goods than before and prices being a little higher, nothing else seemed to have changed.
Aunt Sophie came back, and Louis was finally freed from the burden of housework. He had recently learned to play chess and was hooked. Since the schools were temporarily closed and he was stuck at home with nowhere to go, he could only drag Lucien into playing with him.
Lucien took the opportunity to make housework the stakes, betting against Louis over the chessboard. In the end, he successfully passed all the chores that should have been his onto his younger brother. The Bonaparte Family really did produce good big brothers.
But now, the schools were gradually returning to normal. It was rather amusing: Louis and Lucien's schools had both resumed classes, while the Paris Military Academy where Joseph taught was still closed.
That wasn't really surprising, though. Louis and Lucien's schools were private, while the school where Joseph taught was funded by the state—and specifically by the royal treasury. Institutions like that were always much slower to react. Especially when the king was so dissatisfied with the army.
So Joseph had some free time now. He saw that Sophie had just finished cleaning and was taking a breather, so he struck up a conversation with her.
"Aunt Sophie," Joseph said, "things have been so chaotic these past few days. Is everything all right at home?"
"What could be all right?" Sophie shook her head. "Life is just as hard as ever, even harder now. Bread has gone up in price, and there's something even worse than that: even if you have the