The chemist informed her that Victor's vessel had reached Havana.
He had read the information in a newspaper.

Félicité imagined that Havana was a place where people did nothing
but smoke, and that Victor walked around among negroes in a cloud
of tobacco. Could a person, in case of need, return by land? How
far was it from Pont-l'Evêque? In order to learn these things she
questioned Monsieur Bourais. He reached for his map and began some
explanations concerning longitudes, and smiled with superiority at
Félicité's bewilderment. At last, he took his pencil and pointed
out an imperceptible black point in the scallops of an oval
blotch, adding: "There it is." She bent over the map; the maze of
coloured lines hurt her eyes without enlightening her; and when
Bourais asked her what puzzled her, she requested him to show her
the house Victor lived in. Bourais threw up his hands, sneezed,
and then laughed uproariously; such ignorance delighted his soul;
but Félicité failed to understand the cause of his mirth, she
whose intelligence was so limited that she perhaps expected to see
even the picture of her nephew!

It was two weeks later that Liébard came into the kitchen at
market-time, and handed her a letter from her brother-in-law. As
neither of them could read, she called upon her mistress.

Madame Aubain, who was counting the stitches of her knitting, laid
her work down beside her, opened the letter, started, and in a low
tone and with a searching look said: "They tell you of a--misfortune.
Your nephew--."