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