"Striking brutally through the cloud curtain, like the beam from some celestial projector, a single ray of light lashed at the Koulouba, the governor's residence, poised like a sugar castle on the heights that bore its name."
p. 1

"The faces seemed to have lost all trace of personality. As if some giant eraser had rubbed out their individual traits they had taken on a common mask, the anonymous mask of a crowd."
p. 7

"The night no longer brought [the old people] rest. At the moment the eyes of the body closed, the eyes of the mind were opened ... in the darkness that enclosed the city the deep-toned drumming seemed now to come from everywhere at once, twisting and turning through the heads of those to whom sleep would not come."
p. 12

"The workmen rose early that morning. In truth, they had scarcely closed their eyes. The night before...