Such an errand was strangely repugnant to him.

He anticipated encountering such terrible despair that he feared he would be unable to play his part with sufficient tears.

Then the grief of this mother weighed upon him, although at the bottom of his heart, he cared but little about it.
When Michaud saw him enter, clothed in coarse-looking garments that were too tight for him, he questioned him with his eyes, and Laurent gave an account of the accident in a broken voice, as if exhausted with grief and fatigue.
"I have come to you," said he in conclusion, "because I do not know what to do about the two poor women so cruelly afflicted.

I dare not go to the bereaved mother alone, and want you to accompany me." As he spoke, Olivier looked at him fixedly, and with so straight a glance that he terrified him.

The murderer had flung himself head down among these people belonging to the police, with an audacity calculated to save him.