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Until the age of thirty-eight, Yosif lived in total ignorance of his true father, firmly believing the story told him by his mother, that his father had died in Odessa in 1812, during a plague epidemic that broke out in the city and carried off a quarter of its people.

But in 1848, through rumors that reached Odessa, Luisa found out that the Bonapartist party had acquired unprecedented influence in France; and nostalgia for the empire outweighed all other feelings. Hoping that her son's fate would take a decided turn for the better, she told him the truth about his real father.

What could Yosif change in his life, having found out the truth? Precisely nothing. Even if the story his mother told him were true, which he doubted, it could reflect in no way on his situation. For to demonstrate the fact of the Emperor's having visited Odessa was impossible.

For this reason, he continued his tranquil life, without taking any steps to change it.

As for the Emperor's many offspring, the French secret police began thinking seriously about them after, in the 1848 presidential elections, three quarters of the French electorate voted for Bonaparte's nephew, Louis-Napoleon; and the latter, taking over as head of the Republic, brought into government service his own cousin, Bonaparte's extramarital son Count Alexandre Walewski.