That morning too, after receiving another scolding for the delay in arriving at breakfast, Belle and Jane silently followed their classmates towards the classroom where they would have lessons. The subjects they were taught were the most disparate: from music to art, from literature to history, from horse riding to sewing, from cooking to cleaning. The institute's program seemed perfect, capable of giving an advanced education to all the students, but in reality it had only one objective: to train perfect housewives, helpful and useful to their master or husband, if they ever got married.

Belle knew it well, despite her tender age: it was clear that the institute, like the society to which it belonged, only wanted to keep up appearances. In reality it resembled a factory, where young ladies ready to serve the nobility were created in series as if with a stencil. She knew that one day her future would be that: from the age of twenty-one she would have to serve a Dominer. She had seen the older girls leave school, between tears and sighs, but she struggled to believe that there could be a grayer place than those four walls and in her heart she hoped to get out of that prison as soon as possible, not as a slave, but as rebel. She dreamed of exploring the world incognito, a nameless runaway, free to belong to no one but herself.

Immersed in her dreams, that morning too she sat at the desk that had been assigned to her. She looked at the clock, where the hands ticked slowly, very slowly. She sat in silence with only one reason for endurance: she was anxiously awaiting literature class, the only one she truly loved. Jane, right next to her, was equally lost in thought: she stared in admiration at the old, out-of-tune piano at the back of the classroom, longing for music class with all her being. If Belle was the undisputed lover of books and their enchanting stories, Jane was born for music: her fingers flowed on the piano as if they had never known anything else. That dusty surface came to life in an instant, when that little girl with passionate eyes touched the notes of a simple melody, and everyone was enchanted watching her. The music tutor, despite being a rigid and impatient man, found inspiration again by listening to the emotion that Jane's fingers were able to release. If he was hasty and bored with the other girls, he dedicated himself assiduously to her, confident that one day that gift would be useful to her, to charm a rich nobleman looking for a wife.

The classroom door had a small bell, which rang whenever someone opened the door. And then that tinkling sound brought Belle and Jane back to reality, announcing the grumpy history teacher who was crossing the threshold. He placed his heavy bag on the desk and turned his listless gaze on the students. He pulled a pad of paper from under his arm and began handing it out to the girls, without even looking at their faces. For him they were just numbers, dry brains to be filled with false knowledge.
"You have thirty minutes from now. Twenty questions, thirty minutes, not one more."
He took a crumpled newspaper out of his bag and slouched in his chair, leaving the students alone with the surprise tests. Belle frowned at her paper: she hated the crosses, which never seemed completely right or wrong, but always uncertain.

First, she wrote her name and code at the top of the page: those numbers would probably be the only thing the professor would have read. Then she put the full date of the day at the top right: Friday 13 November 2011. She sighed nervously and then began to read. The first question was simple, it asked to indicate the date of the great liberation. Belle remembered perfectly that it was September 2, 1945, so she marked the first cross without delay. On that day, Hitler's dictatorship had collapsed and France had been liberated, as had much of the world.

She continued: the next question asked what form of government the United States and Europe had since then adopted. This too was easy: if communism had spread in the Soviet Union, leading to another dictatorship, in the Western world, behind the curtain, the oligarchic form had prevailed, with the Dominers in power. After all, man had done nothing but damage, with all the forms of government they had experimented with. Belle remembered what she had read in an old book, more relevant than ever: "man has dominated man to his detriment". In that simple sentence was contained the only truth that history had demonstrated.

She shook her head, biting her lips, and continued reading: What was the Iron Curtain for? To separate "the civilized world" from the rest of humanity, a symbol of the still ongoing cold war. Belle stopped to wonder if there would ever be true peace in the world... Surely men only knew war.

The fourth question was even more senseless than the previous ones, and Belle wanted to erase it with her pen until she replaced those inane words with an ink stain: because oligarchy was the best form of government and had brought true peace and justice to the world. civilized? Not even one of those words was true, she knew it well, despite only eleven years behind her. There was no justice, not in the world she knew. She marked the answer by wrinkling her nose in disgust: because only the Dominers could prevent the chaos of democracy and the greed of dictatorship; only the culture of the nobility could guarantee perfect government.

She turned to the next, even sillier question: Why had equality been sacrificed? She responded by gritting her teeth, once again: to guarantee peace and fundamental rights for the entire population: basic needs, education and leisure for everyone, no one excluded, not even the poorest.

How were the social classes, and consequently every city, divided? According to the Anglo-American model, three distinct classes had been formed, which corresponded to the three groups into which the cities were divided, defined as Lower class district, Middle class district and High class district: respectively the neighborhoods of the proletarians, the bourgeoisie and the nobility, of in which the Dominers were the protagonists, foolish princes called to govern from the heights of their senseless wealth.

Belle finished the rest of the test and then put down the nib; she reread the test and handed it to the teacher, who raised his eyes from the newspaper only to observe the sheet of paper lying on the desk, without sparing it a glance. When the bell rang, announcing the entrance of the "Etiquette" tutor, the next subject on the day's program, all the girls handed in their tests and, just as he had entered, the history teacher left, without saying goodbye.
The following hours followed with the same monotony and slowness, one after the other, between teachings on how to set a perfect table and how to bow before the future master, and in the end the long-awaited literature lesson also arrived.

A young woman with thick dark hair jingled the bell softly, opening the door ajar and leaning inside to greet the teacher who was leaving his desk. She apologized for the inconvenience and turned to her students with a smile, lifting her glasses onto her upturned nose and observing the girls' faces, which lit up with joy, perhaps for the first time in the entire morning.