It's as if I were already dead." However, in spite of these words, tears were rising to his eyes.

"Ah! the poor little thing!" he added, "I kissed her with all my heart before I went away.

If she and the woman hadn't been starving so long the idea of that business would perhaps never have come to me." Then, in all simplicity, he declared that he was ready to die.

If he had ended by depositing his bomb at the entrance of Duvillard's house, it was because he knew the banker well, and was aware that he was the wealthiest of those _bourgeois_ whose fathers at the time of the Revolution had duped the people, by taking all power and wealth for themselves,--the power and wealth which the sons were nowadays so obstinately bent in retaining that they would not even bestow the veriest crumbs on others.
As for the Revolution, he understood it in his own fashion, like an illiterate fellow who had learnt the little he knew from newspapers and speeches at public meetings.

And he struck his chest with his fist as he spoke of his honesty, and was particularly desirous that none should doubt his courage because he had fled.
"I've never robbed anybody," said he, "and if I don't go and hand myself up to the police, it's because they may surely take the trouble to find and arrest me.