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.
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