“That same afternoon I had witnessed a bombardment in the town itself. All the force of this thunderclap had to burst on the Gran Via in order to uproot a  human life. One single life. Passers-by had brushed rubbish off their clothes; others had scattered on the run; and when the light smoke had risen and cleared away, the betrothed, escaped by miracle without a scratch, found at his feet his novia, whose golden arm a moment before had been in his, changed into a blood-filled sponge, changed into a limp packet of flesh and rags.

He had knelt down, still uncomprehending, had nodded his head slowly, as if saying to himself, "Something very strange has happened."

This marvel spattered on the pavement bore no resemblance to what had been his beloved. Misery was excruciatingly slow to engulf him in its tidal wave. For still another second, stunned by the feat of the invisible prestidigitator, he cast a bewildered glance round him in search of the slender form, as if it at least should have survived. Nothing was there but a packet of muck.

Gone was the feeble spark of humanity. And while in the man's throat there was brewing that shriek which I know not what deferred,  he had the leisure to reflect that it was not those lips he had loved but their pout,  not them but their smile. Not those eyes,  but their glance. Not that breast, but its gentle swell. He was free to discover at last the source of the anguish love had been storing up for him,  to learn that it was the unattainable he had been pursuing. What he had yearned to embrace was not the flesh but a downy spirit, a spark, the impalpable angel that inhabits the flesh.”

(The text is excerpted from Antoine de St. Exupéry’s Wind, Sand, and Stars, in his description of a woman killed by a bombardment he witnessed in the Spanish Civil War.)