Note 216 — Chapter XXXII

At a wineshop of the Place Voltaire we met some quite young soldiers on the Sunday morning. They were marine-fusileers of the 1871 class. Their complexion was sallow, their movements heavy, their eyes dull. "And there are many dead?" said we. "Ah!" answered one of them in a stupefied tone, "we have the order to make no prisoners; it is the general who told us" (they could not tell us the name of their general). "If they had not lighted these fires they would not have been served thus; but as they set on fire, we must kill" (textual). Then he went on talking to his comrade. "This morning there" (and he pointed to the barricade of the Mairie), "one came up in a blouse. We led him off. 'You are not going to shoot me?' said he. 'Oh, I should think not!' We made him pass in front of us, and then, pan, pan; and didn't he kick about funnily!"