It is the harsh winter of 1804 in a convent. A group of soldiers are searching for a man who failed in assassinating their new emperor Napoleon, and declare that they follow him to this convent. Obviously, this is ridiculous, and the nuns defend themselves reasonably, which finally drives the soldiers away. The nuns go back to their rooms one and another. Sophie, being one of them, checks the room with the candle in her hands, before someone stops her from going. Behind the altar, she hears a weak voice calling her name. "Sophie…"

Sophie feels alarmed, obviously it is a man. "Who are you?"

A man falls out behind the altar. More than a decade has pasted, but he is not much changed. His brown hair seems to be tied up, but now it has got out of the band's control and falls down just like it was several years ago. The only difference lies in his expressions, he the one who was always clam and sensible now seems painful and awkward.

Sophie brings the candle nearer to recognize his face, and is shocked at once. "Monsieur Girodelle!"

This failed assassinator is the former Commander of the French Imperial guard, Victor Clement de Girodelle.

Chapter 1

It was the year of 1787 in Versailles. Outside the palace, the suffering civilians were put to the edge of breaking out, while inside the palace, the privileged minorities were still enjoying their comfortable lives, not being aware of, or rather paying attention to, the secretly changing situation.

"I know. Now you can go."

"Yes, Commander."

Commander, every time he heard this word, Girodelle would distracted for a moment before he realized the commander meant himself, rather than that woman who had left several months ago. Girodelle would unconsciously search for her figure, always feeling that in the next moment that golden-haired, sapphire-eyed woman would appear in his room. He waited for some time, and eventually put his eyes on the white rose and laughed for his stupidities. She did leave.

The predecessor Commander of the French Imperial guard Oscar François de Jarjayes was a woman; this was a so-called secret that the whole Versailles knew. It might be incredible in this age, but Oscar was approved by the late King as the heir of Jarjayes, was trained officially like any of her male counterpart, and was a master of fence that hardly could any of them defeat her, not to mention the fact that she saved the Queen's life when she was only a teenager. Owing to these, they were actually willing to working under her.

Every time Girodelle regarded Oscar as a master of fence, their encounter would flash to his mind.

Oscar was only fourteen then, still a young girl. Girodelle felt a little shocked but more disdained to find his opponent was a girl. However, he was defeated, much to his surprised.

Later, Girodelle called back this memory many times, and were forced to admit that his special thoughts for her started secretly from this match. His failure didn't leave even a small drop of frustration in his heart, but her blurred figure was rooted there since then. Girodelle thought he appreciated her, both her abilities and her character, and that she was much different from the normal girls in the upper class.

If he must spoke of her similarities with them, Girodelle would say her beauty, which was the only connection of Oscar to the ordinary noble girls, even though Oscar wore army uniform all the time. Girodelle tried to imagine Oscar in evening dress for many times, but he never succeeded. Finally, he gave up, and concluded that in evening dress, she would not be the Oscar he knew, appreciated and admired.

The word admired shocked Girodelle when he first thought of this, after his meeting with his elder brother.

Girodelle's elder brother was a play boy, just like many of his peers who had enough money to enjoy their life, and have enough time to spend their money to enjoy their life. After his love games for almost two decades, brother eventually decided to get married with a pure noble girl who was more than ten years of his junior.

"Well, Victor, believe it or not, in Paris, a young man, who regards himself as a man but is actually no more than a boy, would easily falls in love with a middle-aged madam with a lonely heart. It is through this progress that the boy will be trained to become a man, by learning the most important skills and having the most valuable experience under a madam's hand. A man could not be called a man before he has some experience of this instinctive but memorable activity. And then, the man would continue his voyage in the sea of love, until one day he feels himself yearning for the land to rest, and buried himself in the tomb called married, which ties him with a young and pure girl who is just like himself several years ago. And when the man gradually grows old, his young wife changes to an empty middle-aged woman, and would certainly ignore her old husband and search for a new generation of young preys, to trained them as her husband once was trained." Brother was a little drunk; he shook the bottle and laughed to Girodelle. (Actually, that is my own feeling of the French upper class at that time after I read La Comédie Humaine.)

Girodelle sighed with resignation, having no idea how to answer the words with his brother. In France, divorces among aristocrats were forbidden, thus having lovers was some kind of normal and reasonable, just saw the Queen and that Count Fersen from Sweden. But Girodelle detested this. The woman he would fall in love with and married with must surely be the one he genuinely loved, and was willing to spend his life to guard his promise. Even if later he met someone better or their love was wiped off gradually by the pass of time, the promise he spoke out before God would not change his loyalty.

"Victor, what are you thinking about?" Brother was unsatisfied with Girodelle's absent minded. "You are not like me, nor the majority of our peers. But you must admit that you are not a young boy now, at this moment, and you'd better pay some attention to this."

"Maybe owing to my unsuccessfulness in finding the one who make me flipped." Girodelle starred at the wine in his bottle before he drank up.

Brother showed a serious appearance, while the words he spoke out almost made Griodelle's bottle fall from his hand. "I think that is because you love your beautiful superior…is her name Oscar?" Brother's laughers in the next second manifested his actual feelings.

"Brother, you should not make such a boring joke." Girodelle blamed him without hesitation at that time, but he couldn't ignore a strange sense of being exposed. And later on, he recognized that if not for brother's joke, he would never realize his own feeling.

The belief that he admired, or even loved Oscar hammered in Girodelle's mind, pushed this sensible and clam man to rethinking for several times, before he jumped from his chair and started to wander aimlessly in his room, just to make himself come down from its aftermath. Actually, he had never thought of this, and regarded his emotion towards Oscar as merely appreciation.

Girodelle had forgotten the date he finally understood this. At that moment, it seemed to bring an earthquake in his mind, but later on when he recounted, any other outside information of that same day was like a faraway song, floating in the air and waving him goodbye. That day, when he tried hard to catch, seems no more than a normal day, as if his emotion had never changed, as if he loved Oscar for all the years when she was still in the French Imperial guard, when she was still near him.

And it is the truth. It is at that moment that Girodelle realized he did love Oscar all these years.

Girodelle was some kind of regretful for this finding. In all the years when she was his immediate superior he never learnt this, not until she left that he acted madly to search for her marks left behind in the palace now without her, to prove to himself that they were once so near to each other. Such a mad man weren't you. Girodelle wondered himself.

During his years in the French Imperial guard, Girodelle had been accustomed to the way the upper class fell in love, but he never dropped into its trap. Maybe Girodelle was stickler for neatness in ethnics. He hated to act like any of the noble men in Versailles, using his position and sweet words to inveigle a pure maiden, or taking his need and satisfying his experienced companion, someone else's wife at the same time. What he wanted is the genuine love, the passion in his heart that would ignited every time he saw her, the warmth he felt every time he just thought of her, the sweetness he tasted when they tie their knot by the witness of God. That strange idea made Girodelle an outcast of the upper class. He had passed three decades of his life without any affair connected him with anyone. Other people were always eager of the reason, but Girodelle was too cold towards their enthusiasm for gossip.

During these years, expect his family members, the only woman he met frequently was his immediate superior Oscar, though he at that time regarded her as only superior and friend, being aware of her gender but not really considering her as a woman he may pursuit.

Sometimes, a strange thought would come into his mind, if Oscar was just a normal noble lady, then what would happen? But Girodelle would get this thought out of his mind quickly, having no idea of continuing his imagine. He also considered if any other ordinary ladies in his class would have such calmness, erudition, fortitude, and many other advantages like Oscar; however, he ended up finding no one. Maybe many of them had one or two, but when he put them all together, no one in Versailles could satisfy all these requirements, no one but Oscar. Girodelle was not surprised when discovered this. It is her special experience that shaped the special Oscar, the one and only Oscar.

More importantly, for Girodelle, it was Oscar who witnessed almost all his youth, the progress of his step-by-step growing up. Any other person, no matter how much similar to Oscar, would never had the opportunities to achieve this.

Several months after she had left, before Girodelle recounted a weak answer haunted in his mind when he unconsciously starred at the white rose outside his window, that if Oscar was just an ordinary noble lady, he would ask General Jarjayes for her hands, several years ago.