One evening, being the first to arrive, he found the old lady alone in the drawingroom. “Well! little one,” he asked, with his smiling familiarity, “are your affairs going on all right? Why the deuce do you make such mysteries with me?”
“I’m not hiding anything from you,” Felicite replied, somewhat perplexed.
“Come, do you think you can deceive an old fox like me, eh? My dear child, treat me as a friend. I’m quite ready to help you secretly. Come now, be frank!”
A bright idea struck Felicite. 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, Felicite, 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 Eugene 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: “Eugene writes that he is going on all right.” Felicite 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.
Monsieur de Carnavant had not been mistaken, and her own suspicions were confirmed. There were about forty letters, which enabled her to follow the course of that great Bonapartist movement which was to terminate in the second Empire. The letters constituted a sort of concise journal, narrating events as they occurred, and drawing hopes and suggestions from each of them. Eugene was full of faith. He described Prince Louis Bonaparte to his father as the predestined necessary man who alone could unravel the situation. He had believed in him prior even to his return to France, at a time when Bonapartism was treated as a ridiculous chimera. Felicite understood that her son had been a very active secret agent since 1848. Although he did not clearly explain his position in Paris, it was evident that he was working for the Empire, under the orders of personages whose names he mentioned with a sort of familiarity. Each of his letters gave information as to the progress of the cause, to which an early denouement was foreshadowed; and usually concluded by pointing out the line of action that Pierre should pursue at Plassans. Felicite could now comprehend certain words and acts of her husband, whose significance had previously escaped her; Pierre was obeying his son, and blindly following his recommendations.
When the old woman had finished reading, she was convinced. Eugene’s entire thoughts were clearly revealed to her. He reckoned upon making his political fortune in the squabble, and repaying his parents the debt he owed them for his education, by throwing them a scrap of the prey as soon as the quarry was secured. However small the assistance his father might render to him and to the cause, it would not be difficult to get him appointed receiver of taxes. Nothing would be refused to one who like Eugene had steeped his hands in the most secret machinations. His letters were simply a kind attention on his part, a device to prevent the Rougons from committing any act of imprudence, for which Felicite felt deeply grateful. She read certain passages of the letters twice over, notably those in which Eugene spoke, in vague terms, of “a final catastrophe.” This catastrophe, the nature or bearings of which she could not well conceive became a sort of end of the world for her. God would range the chosen ones on His right hand and the damned on His left, and she placed herself among the former.
When she succeeded in replacing the key in her husband’s waistcoat pocket on the following night, she made up her mind to employ the same expedient for reading every fresh letter that arrived. She resolved, likewise, to profess complete ignorance. This plan was an excellent one. Henceforward, she gave her husband the more assistance as she appeared to render it unconsciously. When Pierre thought he was working alone it was she who brought the conversation round to the desired topic, recruiting partisans for the decisive moment. She felt hurt at Eugene’s distrust of her. She wanted to be able to say to him, after the triumph: “I knew all, and so far from spoiling anything, I have secured the victory.” Never did an accomplice make less noise or work harder. The marquis, whom she had taken into her confidence, was astounded at it.
The fate of her dear Aristide, however, continued to make her uneasy. Now that she shared the faith of her eldest son, the rabid articles of the “Independant” alarmed her all the more. She longed to convert the unfortunate republican to Napoleonist ideas; but she did not know how to accomplish this in a discreet manner. She recalled the emphasis with which Eugene had told them to be on their guard against Aristide. At last she submitted the matter to Monsieur de Carnavant, who was entirely of the same opinion.
“Little one,” he said to her, “in politics one must know how to look after one’s self. If you were to convert your son, and the ‘Independant’ were to start writing in defence of Bonapartism, it would deal the party a rude blow. The ‘Independant’ has already been condemned, its title alone suffices to enrage the middle classes of Plassans. Let dear Aristide flounder about; this only moulds young people. He does not appear to me to be cut out for carrying on the role of a martyr for any length of time.”
However, in her eagerness to point out the right way to her family, now that she believed herself in possession of the truth, Felicite even sought to convert her son Pascal. The doctor, with the egotism of a scientist immersed in his researches, gave little heed to politics. Empires might fall while he was making an experiment, yet he would not have deigned to turn his head. He at last yielded, however, to certain importunities of his mother, who accused him more than ever of living like an unsociable churl.
“If you were to go into society,” she said to him, “you would get some well-to-do patients. Come, at least, and spend some evenings in our drawingroom. You will make the acquaintance of Messieurs Roudier, Granoux, and Sicardot, all gentlemen in good circumstances, who will pay you four or five francs a visit. The poor people will never enrich you.”
The idea of succeeding in life, of seeing all her family attain to fortune, had become a form of monomania