Endurance

In real life, if an abandoned baby was left at a church door, there was a good chance a priest would find it. And even if no priest did, there was still a good chance an early-rising farmer or worker would.

Morning prayers were customary in the nineteenth century. Abandoned babies weren't rare, but few believers would leave one on a church's doorstep.

A devout believer would most likely take the baby home and raise it, especially if the infant was healthy and had no disabilities.

Kill Wichli Jasiński, then take Miss Celestina to her mother? The resemblance between mother and daughter ought to make everything easy to explain.

There was just one small problem: Ajani had gone out of her way to hide her whereabouts, and Franz had deliberately avoided asking. After all, seeing each other again would be awkward.

Besides, Ajani excelled at hiding herself. Quite a few of Franz's intelligence agents had even been trained by her.

Stirring up more misunderstandings might lead to needless casualties.

Speaking of abandoned babies, Franz thought it was high time to set up foundling wheels throughout the Austrian Empire. The first foundling wheels had appeared in Italy, back when the Church still held sway. To put an end to infanticide, a priest had come up with the idea of installing foundling wheels to receive unwanted babies.

The foundling wheels of that time were crude, though, rather like ovens. Once a baby was placed inside, its weight would set off a mechanism, ringing a bell inside the church. The staff responsible for the foundlings would then come and take the baby away.

But some things, though well-intentioned, became disasters in practice. Far from earning the Church a reputation for charity, foundling wheels became a major source of criticism.

Politicians saw them as