What matter if the future King of France walked up to his throne over steps made of headless corpses and rendered slippery with the blood of martyrs?
The ground beneath de Batz' feet was hard and white with the frost.
Overhead the pale, wintry moon looked down serene and placid on this giant city wallowing in an ocean of misery.
There, had been but little snow as yet this year, and the cold was intense.

On his right now the Cimetiere des SS.

Innocents lay peaceful and still beneath the wan light of the moon.

A thin covering of snow lay evenly alike on grass mounds and smooth stones.

Here and there a broken cross with chipped arms still held pathetically outstretched, as if in a final appeal for human love, bore mute testimony to senseless excesses and spiteful desire for destruction.
But here within the precincts of the dwelling of the eternal Master a solemn silence reigned; only the cold north wind shook the branches of the yew, causing them to send forth a melancholy sigh into the night, and to shed a shower of tiny crystals of snow like the frozen tears of the dead.
And round the precincts of the lonely graveyard, and down narrow streets or open places, the night watchmen went their rounds, lanthorn in hand, and every five minutes their monotonous call rang clearly out in the night: "Sleep, citizens! everything is quiet and at peace!" We may take it that de Batz did not philosophise over-much on what went on around him.