Rosalie, who was intimate with the Chavoncourt girls, knew that the three young men had no secrets from each other.  She reflected that if Monsieur de Soulas should repeat her words, it would be to his two companions.  Now, Monsieur de Vauchelles had his matrimonial plans, as Amedee had his; he wished to marry Victoire, the eldest of the Chavoncourts, on whom an old aunt was to settle an estate worth seven thousand francs a year, and a hundred thousand francs in hard cash, when the contract was to be signed.  Victoire was this aunt’s god-daughter and favorite niece.  Consequently, young Chavoncourt and his friend Vauchelles would be sure to warn Monsieur de Chavoncourt of the danger he was in from Albert’s candidature.

But this did not satisfy Rosalie.  She sent the Prefet of the department a letter written with her left hand, signed “A friend to Louis Philippe,” in which she informed him of the secret intentions of Monsieur Albert de Savarus, pointing out the serious support a Royalist orator might give to Berryer, and revealing to him the deeply artful course pursued by the lawyer during his two years’ residence at Besancon.  The Prefet was a capable man, a personal enemy of the Royalist party, devoted by conviction to the Government of July—­in short, one of those men of whom, in the Rue de Grenelle, the Minister of the Interior could say, “We have a capital Prefet at Besancon.”  —­The Prefet read the letter, and, in obedience to its instructions, he burnt it.

Rosalie aimed at preventing Albert’s election, so as to keep him five years longer at Besancon.

At that time an election was a fight between parties, and in order to win, the Ministry chose its ground by choosing the moment when it would give battle.  The elections were therefore not to take place for three months yet.  When a man’s whole life depends on an election, the period that elapses between the issuing of the writs for convening the electoral bodies, and the day fixed for their meetings, is an interval during which ordinary vitality is suspended.  Rosalie fully understood how much latitude Albert’s absorbed state would leave her during these three months.  By promising Mariette—­as she afterwards confessed—­to take both her and Jerome into her service, she induced the maid to bring her all the letters Albert might sent to Italy, and those addressed to him from that country.  And all the time she was pondering these machinations, the extraordinary girl was working slippers for her father with the most innocent air in the world.  She even made a greater display than ever of candor and simplicity, quite understanding how valuable that candor and innocence would be to her ends.

“My daughter grows quite charming!” said Madame de Watteville.