Volume 5: Fellow Traveler Chapter 797: Thirst for Knowledge
"David Wu...why don't you say your name is Octavian!"
Zhang Shou heard the pronunciation of the name clearly different from the original one, so he definitely didn't mishear the surname, and he almost subconsciously complained. When he found that the young man in front of him suddenly widened his eyes, he saw Chen Yongshou's face full of confusion, so he simply said with a smile: "If you are Octavian, then I am Caesar!"
"You actually know Caesar and Octavian!" The blond boy was immediately surprised and delighted, his eyes were shining, "No wonder they told me that you could translate those books! God bless you, you are indeed a true scholar!"
If God knew that you, a believer, were chanting "Buddha is above" on the land of the East, he would surely kill you! This must have been taught to the boy by someone else when he was learning Chinese on the ship. Maybe the person who taught him thought that the God believed in by the church was the Western Buddha, and that this translation was correct, but he didn't know that this was simply a divine operation...
Zhang Shou was both angry and amused, and immediately laughed and said, "I am a scholar, but I am not proficient in the languages of various countries, so don't count on me for translation! I just know who Caesar and Octavian are. You are so young, but you have great ambitions. Why, do you want to revive the Roman Empire that ?"
"Wait, wait, speak slower, I don't understand..."
The blond boy finally showed a bitter look, and quickly bowed and asked Zhang Shou to stop, and this time, his voice was not as clear and fluent as at the beginning. It was obvious that he had rehearsed some of his words well in advance, but what he said now was not, and it also revealed his lack of Chinese listening and speaking.
However, as a person who learned Chinese while traveling across the ocean, Zhang Shou felt that this kid was already good enough. You know, as the most difficult language to learn in the world, even for young people who are most receptive to new things, it is really not easy to learn such pronunciation in a short time.
Of course, the most important thing is that the person who taught him didn't speak Cantonese or other dialects. This is really precious! If the boy had just opened his mouth and spoke Cantonese or some coastal dialect, he would have been very upset!
Although Chen Yongshou didn't understand the conversation between Zhang Shou and the blond boy, he could at least hear that Zhang Shou had a certain degree of understanding of the boy's country or history. He knew very well that he brought people here today on a whim, and Zhang Shou definitely couldn't have any connection with the people in the fleet, so this was very shocking.
He thought of the emperor's revelation that Zhang Shou had apparently had other unknown teachers besides Ge Yong, and these teachers must have traveled overseas, so the things they taught Zhang Shou were very novel. That was why Zhang Shou would occasionally teach some foreign history that no one else knew in Banshan Hall and Jiuzhang Hall.
The two names now spoken by Zhang Shou and the blond boy obviously also belong to the category of foreign history, which proves what the emperor said.
Therefore, seeing that the blond boy who called himself Wu Dawei was obviously a little flustered because he couldn't keep up with what he heard, Zhang Shou stopped talking with a smile, but didn't explain anything. Chen Yongshou said with a stern face: "Master Zhang is a busy man, how can he have time to help you learn to talk! Well, in short, it's your luck that you can set foot on the land of the Ming Dynasty alive, so you can take care of yourself from now on!"
After saying that, Chen Yongshou bowed to Zhang Shou and said, "Master Zhang, you should try to use this kid. If it doesn't work, throw him to the mines! He has been eating, drinking and riding on the ship for free for half a year. In addition, the expenses of traveling from Guangzhou to the capital for several months are enough for him to dig mines for a lifetime!"
When Zhang Shou saw Chen Yongshou say this, he glared at the blond boy with a stern face, then turned and left. The boy who seemed a little jumpy just now turned pale in an instant, fully showing that he was indeed still a child. He couldn't help but smile, and after Chen Yongshou disappeared outside the door, he coughed lightly.
"If you don't want to become a miner, David Wu... Well, I don't want to ask you what your name is. After all, Florence or Pisa, which is far away, has nothing to do with me... Shouldn't you tell me if you can really understand that carload of books? Don't nod so quickly. You know, although I haven't been to your hometown, there are some things I still know."
This time, Zhang Shou deliberately slowed down his speech and tried not to use any idioms. Seeing that the blond boy Wu Dawei was listening and trying to understand what he said, he paused and asked the most important question.
"For example, the language used to write books is different from your daily writing. If I remember correctly, this should be... Latino. Do you really know it?"
Zhang Shou uttered this Latin word in very unstandard Italian, and then the blond boy's eyes widened suddenly, and then he scratched his head as if he was guilty.
"I haven't learned Latino yet... but I can understand part of it because the words I read and write seem to be related to Latino! Anyway, I definitely understand more than those people on the ship and the interpreters!"
Seeing the man staring at him nervously, with an expression of forced confidence saying, "I can do it, I can definitely do it, you have to believe me, buddy," Zhang Shou folded his hands and said nothing, just calmly examining the other person. After a long while, he suddenly asked an unrelated question: "You just said you are fifteen years old? I think you are not that old, right?"
The blond boy was stunned for a moment, then hurriedly explained: "I am really fifteen, really! Isn't it your rule that you grow one year older during the Chinese New Year? It's December now, and the Chinese New Year is coming soon, so of course I can say that I am fifteen!"
Zhang Shou burst out laughing. Chinese people often use virtual age, so for children whose birthdays are at the end of the year, the number he reports after the New Year can even be two years older. But even if he does this subtraction, he still feels that the boy in front of him may not even be thirteen years old.
However, seeing the sincere and innocent look in the man's eyes, he was too lazy to ask any more questions. It is true that Italian originated from Latin, but as far as he knows, there are actually many differences in terms of words and grammar. Of course, such differences are much smaller than the differences between English and Latin.
But this does not mean that people who know Italian can easily read Latin books! However, at this point, instead of relying on those interpreters, it is better to rely on this blond boy who has come to the Ming Dynasty!
Therefore, Zhang Shou did not waste time, but stood up and walked to the bookshelf in the school hall, and deliberately picked out a book from the cart of books that he and Lu Sanlang had put on the bookshelf when Chen Yongshou left for the first time to find someone. Of course, since this batch of books was not sheepskin books, but they were also some old books, he deliberately put on a pair of thin silk gloves.
It was such a simple action, but the blond boy stared at it intently for a long time. Finally, when the book was delivered to him, he stretched out his hands without saying a word. However, he did not take the book, but stared at the gloves in Zhang Shou's hand. His eyes clearly said, I want one too!
Zhang Shou couldn't help but be amused by this clear request. He sneered, and without taking off the gloves in his hands, he returned to the desk, pulled out the top drawer of the three-drawer cabinet next to him, and took out another pair of silk gloves. When he stood up again and came to the blond boy, he handed the gloves over.
This time, the blond boy grabbed the gloves almost instantly and looked at them over and over for a long time. As he put them on, he said admiringly, "They actually use silk to make gloves. This place is really rich! In our place, poor women will save money to make handkerchiefs with silk and show them to others when they go out. The richest women use silk to make skirts and clothes."
"Especially those patterned silks. You can't buy them even if you cover them with gold coins. You have to pile them up to get them."
When he said the word "full of", the blond boy who was trying hard to put on the silk gloves made an exaggerated gesture, as if he wanted to say a small mountain of gold coins to be enough. To this, Zhang Shou just laughed and then nodded at the boy, motioning the little guy to open the book and take a look.
Seeing that his words obviously failed to attract Zhang Shou's attention, the blond boy could only look down and flip through the book. However, his eyes seemed to be concentrating on the beautiful italicized words, but in fact he was doing two things at once, racking his brains to think of a way to escape.
For an illegitimate child, and not an illegitimate child of a noble, but an illegitimate child of an ordinary rich man, there would definitely be no tutor who could teach him a wide variety of knowledge. It was a great blessing for him to be able to read and write, because he grew up with his father, and his father's real wife was also good to him.
Therefore, although he had long been determined to learn Latin, it was only on his list and he had not had time to learn it yet! But soon, he found that this book seemed to be the one he had always wanted to read! He tried hard to recognize the words in the book, trying his best to figure out the meanings, and suddenly forgot that there was Zhang Shou beside him.
After all, even though his father always treated him as a full member of the family, he had rarely read those old books at home. These old treasures were not cheap products printed in recent years as paper became cheaper and books gradually became available to well-off families, but substitutes for parchment books.
Therefore, the luxurious gold-stamped cover and the thick, crisp paper were incomparable to the books he had read before. It was not a collection of whining poems, nor was it some empty so-called philosophy, or the stories of third-rate writers, but real knowledge.
Even though he couldn't understand it, or could only understand a little bit of it with the words he figured out, this didn't stop the blond boy from greedily reading on. Until... a hand suddenly blocked his sight, isolating the book from his eyes.
The blond boy glared over angrily, but when he met the indifferent look, he suddenly realized his situation.
This was not at home . If his father found him reading the book he treated as a family heirloom, at most he would be pinned to the ground and beaten severely. But this was in a foreign country. Ever since he sneaked onto the ship out of curiosity, hoping to see where the so-called Eastern country was, his life would no longer be in his own hands!
Therefore, the blond boy immediately hid his anger and showed just the right amount of fear. This was also his only way to deal with his father. After all, even if it was an illegitimate child, for a father without any other children, this trick often allowed him to escape most of the blame and even win the sympathy and protection of the mother.
If Zhang Shou was really only as big as he looked, then he might have been fooled by this little guy. The problem was that he had lived two lives as a human being, and he was deeply curious about this blond boy whose origins were completely unknown. So of course he would not miss the other party's fleeting emotional change after he made this move.
Or maybe he discovered that the boy's true emotion was not anger or fear, but... annoyance? In other words, even if this book was indeed written by his wealthy father, the boy had never read it, even though he was very interested?
So he asked calmly, "After reading it for so long, can you tell me what book this is?"
The blond boy felt relieved. He took a deep breath and said with his head held high: "This is a very famous work in ancient Greece. It is called Στοιχεiα!" After saying this word very quickly, he looked down at Zhang Shou's hand that had not moved away and said in a dull voice, "Many learned people say that it records the truth of the world."
"So it's Euclid's Στοιχεiα." Zhang Shou calmly uttered a few words. Seeing the boy in front of him showing an obvious look of surprise, he laughed and said, "More than a hundred years ago in the Yuan Dynasty, our people translated this book. At that time, many people studied it in order to compile a calendar. If that's the case, this book is not precious."
This time, the blond boy almost popped his eyes out. When the man from the palace, who was called Eunuch Chen, brought him here today to translate the book, he realized that he had grabbed a life-saving straw. If you haven't been to the East, you don't know how big the country is. This Eastern country is not only dozens or hundreds of Florences, but probably hundreds or even thousands of them!
He was very interested in everything about other people, but other people seemed to have no interest in his country. They even regarded him as a spy who had sneaked in, and a useless spy at that!
If no one needs him to translate these books, he won't even have the chance to read them...will he even lose his life?
After thinking this through, the blond boy suddenly panicked and shouted, "These books are translated from Euclid's original text, and your books are definitely not... People who don't understand these things, plus they only translate from one language to another, it's easy to make mistakes!"
