He was a journeyman engineer, and gazed obstinately at the table where lay his little leather tool-bag, bulging with something it contained--something, perhaps, which he had to take back to a work-shop.
He might have been thinking of a long, enforced spell of idleness, of a vain search for any kind of work during the two previous months of that terrible winter.

Or perhaps it was the coming bloody reprisals of the starvelings that occupied the fiery reverie which set his large, strange, vague blue eyes aglow.

All at once he noticed that his daughter had taken up the tool-bag and was trying to open it to see what it might contain.
At this he quivered and at last spoke, his voice kindly, yet bitter with sudden emotion, which made him turn pale.

"Celine, you must leave that alone.

I forbade you to touch my tools," said he; then taking the bag, he deposited it with great precaution against the wall behind him.
"And so, madame," asked Pierre, "this man Laveuve lives on this floor ?" Madame Theodore directed a timid, questioning glance at Salvat.