He would have liked to die in perfect peace.
So he avoided the gaze of Rengade's one eye, which glared from beneath the white bandage.

And of his own accord he proceeded to the end of the Aire Saint-Mittre, to the narrow lane hidden by the timber stacks.
Mourgue followed him thither.
The Aire stretched out, with an aspect of desolation under the sallow sky.

A murky light fell here and there from the copper-coloured clouds.
Never had a sadder and more lingering twilight cast its melancholy over this bare expanse--this wood-yard with its slumbering timber, so stiff and rigid in the cold.

The prisoners, the soldiers, and the mob along the high road disappeared amid the darkness of the trees.

The expanse, the beams, the piles of planks alone grew pale under the fading light, assuming a muddy tint that vaguely suggested the bed of a dried-up torrent.