What was coming out of this thick darkness?
[23] 16,410 men, the figures taken from the Ministry of War.
CHAPTER XVI. THE MASSACRE
Suddenly a window was opened.
Upon Hell.
Dante, had he leaned over the summit of the shadow, would have been able to see the eighth circle of his poem; the funereal Boulevard Montmartre.
Paris, a prey to Bonaparte; a monstrous spectacle. The gloomy armed men massed together on this boulevard felt an appalling spirit enter into them; they ceased to be themselves, and became demons.
There was no longer a single French soldier, but a host of indefinable phantoms, carrying out a horrible task, as though in the glimmering light of a vision.