Set in flower gardens were the houses, with red roofs, green shutters, and white walls.
Over those that faced south had been trained pear-trees, their branches, heavy with fruit, spread out against the walls like branches of candelabra.

The town hall was an example of Gothic architecture, in detail and design more celebrated even than the town hall of Bruges or Brussels.

It was five hundred years old, and lately had been repaired with taste and at great cost.
Opposite was the Church of St.Pierre, dating from the fifteenth century, a very noble building, with many chapels filled with carvings of the time of the Renaissance in wood, stone, and iron.

In the university were one hundred and fifty thousand volumes.
Near it was the bronze statue of Father Damien, priest of the leper colony in the South Pacific, of whom Robert Louis Stevenson wrote.
On the night of the 27th these buildings were empty, exploded cartridges.

Statues, pictures, carvings, parchments, archives--all these were gone.
No one defends the sniper.