At last she found out that he was employed in the _chambre
noire_, the department of the police by which letters passing through the
post are opened. The duties were well paid, and she could not persuade
him to give them up. They were on uneasy terms, when an accident threw a
list of all the names of the _employes_ in the _chambre noire_, into the
hands of an opposition editor, who published them in his newspaper.
'She then separated from him.'
'If the Post-office,' I said, 'were not a Government monopoly, if
everyone had a right to send his letters in the way that he liked best,
there would be some excuse. But the State compels you, under severe
penalties, to use its couriers, undertaking, not tacitly but expressly,
to respect the secrecy of your correspondence, and then systematically
violates it.'
'I should have said,' answered Ampere, 'not expressly but tacitly.'
'No,' I replied; 'expressly. Guizot, when Minister for Foreign Affairs,
proclaimed from the tribune, that in France the secrecy of correspondence
was, under all circumstances, inviolable. This has never been officially
contradicted.
'The English Post-office enters into no such engagements.
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