Before anyone could have reached them, she would have blown up the whole place at the risk of perishing herself in the explosion.

With her wonted air of quiet heroism, she handed Guillaume the key which he had sent her by Pierre.
"You were not anxious, I hope ?" she said.
He pressed her hands with a commingling of affection and respect.

"My only anxiety," he replied, "was that the police might come here and treat you roughly....

You are the guardian of our secret, and it would be for you to finish my work should I disappear." While Guillaume and Madame Leroi were thus engaged upstairs, Pierre, still seated near the window below, felt his discomfort increasing.

The inmates of the house certainly regarded him with no other feeling than one of affectionate sympathy; and so how came it that he considered them hostile?
The truth was that he asked himself what would become of him among those workers, who were upheld by a faith of their own, whereas he believed in nothing, and did not work.