"No, but what would you have? She's
with Mamma Theodore. Women always find some help. And then I'm done for,
I can do nothing for anybody. 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.
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