Greatly alarmed, Lupin began to run.
At first sight, there seemed to be no one in the chalet.
"Pierre! Pierre!" he cried.
Hearing no sound, he entered the front passage and the room which he had occupied.
He stopped short, rooted to the threshold.
Above Dolores' corpse, hung Pierre Leduc, with a rope round his neck, dead.
Lupin impatiently pulled himself together from head to foot. He refused to yield to a single gesture of despair. He refused to utter a single violent word. After the cruel blows which fate had dealt him, after Dolores' crimes and death, after Massier's execution, after all those disturbances and catastrophes, he felt the absolute necessity of retaining all his self-command. If not, his brain would undoubtedly give way. . . .
"Idiot!" he said, shaking his fist at Pierre Leduc. "You great idiot, couldn't you wait? In ten years we should have had Alsace-Lorraine again!"
To relieve his mind, he sought for words to say, for attitudes; but his ideas escaped him and his head seemed on the point of bursting.