The mayor had a red stain on his forehead from a long skin wound.

Upon his breast fluttered a tattered tricolor; the municipality had placed it there that he might receive the invaders who had torn most of it away.

The priest was holding his little round body as erect as possible, wishing to embrace in a look of resignation the victims, the executioners, earth and heaven.

He appeared larger than usual and more imposing.

His black girdle, broken by the roughness of the soldiers, left his cassock loose and floating.