A bright idea struck Félicité. She had nothing to tell; but perhaps she might find out something if she kept quiet. “Why do you smile?” Monsieur de Carnavant resumed. “That’s the beginning of a confession, you know. I suspected that you must be behind your husband. Pierre is too stupid to invent the pretty treason you are hatching. I sincerely hope the Bonapartists will give you what I should have asked for you from the Bourbons.” This single sentence confirmed the suspicions which the old woman had entertained for some time past. “Prince Louis has every chance, hasn’t he?” she eagerly inquired. “Will you betray me if I tell you that I believe so?” the marquis laughingly replied. “I’ve donned my mourning over it, little one. I’m simply a poor old man, worn out and only fit to be laid on the shelf. It was for you, however, that I was working. Since you have been able to find the right track without me, I shall feel some consolation in seeing you triumph amidst my own defeat. Above all things, don’t make any more mysteries. Come to me if you are ever in trouble.” And he added, with the sceptical smile of a nobleman who has lost caste: “Pshaw! I also can go in for a little treachery!” At this moment the clan of retired oil and almond dealers arrived. “Ah! the dear reactionaries!” Monsieur de Carnavant continued in an undertone. “You see, little one, the great art of politics consists in having a pair of good eyes when other people are blind. You hold all the best cards in the pack.” On the following day, Félicité, incited by this conversation, desired to make sure on the matter. They were then in the first days of the year 1851. For more than eighteen months, Rougon had been in the habit of receiving a letter from his son Eugène regularly every fortnight. He would shut himself in the bedroom to read these letters, which he then hid at the bottom of an old secretaire, the key of which he carefully kept in his waistcoat pocket. Whenever his wife questioned him about their son he would simply answer: “Eugène writes that he is going on all right.” Félicité had long since thought of laying hands on her son’s letters. So early on the morning after her chat with the marquis, while Pierre was still asleep, she got up on tiptoes, took the key of the secretaire from her husband’s waistcoat and substituted in its place that of the chest of drawers, which was of the same size. Then, as soon as her husband had gone out, she shut herself in the room in her turn, emptied the drawer, and read all the letters with feverish curiosity.