A sergeant said to an officer who took hold of his arm: 'Lieutenant, you are betraying us.' The soldiers had no consciousness of themselves; they had gone mad with the crime they were ordered to commit.

There comes a moment when the very outrageousness of what you are doing makes you redouble your blows.

Blood is a kind of horrible wine; men get drunk with carnage.
"It seemed as if some invisible hand were launching death from the midst of a cloud.

The soldiers were no longer aught but projectiles.
"Two guns in the roadway of the boulevard were pointed at the front of a single house, that of M.Sallandrouze, and fired volley after volley at it, at close range.

This house, which is an old mansion of hewn stone, remarkable for its almost monumental flight of steps, being split by bullets as if by iron wedges, opened, gaped, and cracked from top to bottom.