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Updated: July 14, 2025
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.
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.
The secret object that her husband was pursuing excited her far more than the Legitimist intrigues of Monsieur de Carnavant had ever done. She abandoned, without much regret, the calculations she had based on the marquis's success now that her husband declared he would be able to make large profits by other means. She displayed, moreover, remarkable prudence and discretion.
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.
The Marquis de Carnavant, the nobleman who, according to the scandalous talk of the town, had been on very familiar terms with Felicite's mother, used occasionally to visit the Rougons. Evil tongues asserted that Madame Rougon resembled him.
"You think, then," she resumed, "that an insurrection is necessary to ensure our fortune!" "That's my opinion," replied Monsieur de Carnavant. And he added, with a slightly ironical smile: "A new dynasty is never founded excepting upon an affray. Blood is good manure. It will be a fine thing for the Rougons to date from a massacre, like certain illustrious families."
He had barely time to hide in a dark corner formed by a little staircase leading to the garrets of the house. The Rougons' door opened, and the marquis appeared, followed by Felicite. Monsieur de Carnavant usually left before the gentlemen of the new town did, in order no doubt to avoid having to shake hands with them in the street.
She kissed her dear child, and placed him on her right hand. The Marquis de Carnavant, weary of incarcerating himself, and full of eager curiosity, had likewise come to see her, and stood on her left, leaning on the window rail. When Monsieur de Bleriot offered his hand to Rougon on the square below Felicite began to weep. "Oh! see, see," she said to Aristide. "He has shaken hands with him.
M. de Carnavant on his side preserved the amiable smile of a nobleman lowering himself to the level of these middle class people, without making any of those contemptuous grimaces which any other resident of the Saint-Marc quarter would have thought fit under such circumstances. The parasite life he had led had rendered him supple.
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.
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