Page 296: "the still, sad music of humanity."

From page 296 of the book:  "Yes, you've made me very sad," Revenant repeated. "You know, I see the tears of Christ each time that I look into the soul of a desperate man. When I hear confessions I don't just tally the sins and hand out penance like Meroux distributes the meat across the counter, 'hearing oftentimes the still, sad music of humanity,'" the priest replied, chanting a quote from Wordsworth.

[Following is an excerpt from...
COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR. JULY 13, 1798.  (William Wordsworth)]

If this
      Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft--                       
      In darkness and amid the many shapes
      Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
      Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
      Have hung upon the beatings of my heart--
      How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
      O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods,
      How often has my spirit turned to thee!
        And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
      With many recognitions dim and faint,
      And somewhat of a sad perplexity,                              
      The picture of the mind revives again:
      While here I stand, not only with the sense
      Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
      That in this moment there is life and food
      For future years. And so I dare to hope,
      Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
      I came among these hills; when like a roe
      I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
      Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
      Wherever nature led: more like a man                           
      Flying from something that he dreads, than one
      Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
      (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
      And their glad animal movements all gone by)
      To me was all in all.--I cannot paint
      What then I was. The sounding cataract
      Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
      The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
      Their colours and their forms, were then to me
      An appetite; a feeling and a love,                             
      That had no need of a remoter charm,
      By thought supplied, nor any interest
      Unborrowed from the eye.--That time is past,
      And all its aching joys are now no more,
      And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
      Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts
      Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
      Abundant recompence. For I have learned
      To look on nature, not as in the hour
      Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes                   
      The still, sad music of humanity,      Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
      To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
      A presence that disturbs me with the joy
      Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
      Of something far more deeply interfused,
      Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
      And the round ocean and the living air,
      And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
      A motion and a spirit, that impels                            
      All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
      And rolls through all things.

Page 348 "Revenant brought us to a large boulder about the size of a small chair."

From page 348 of the book:  In one lane of trees, Revenant brought us to a large boulder about the size of a small chair.
 "We have to move this," he said.
 "What?" Ebert exclaimed, coming up along side of him.
 "We have to move it; exactly one foot."
 "Are you crazy?" said Ebert.
 "No, I'm not crazy.  We're five men.  We can do it.”
 I looked at Ebert, Revenant, and Shanzenbach, old and intoxicated.  If we tried to move that rock they'd suffer hernias and collapse.  We'd have three dead men on our hands.
 "Let Owen and me do it," I said.
 "It's a heavy one," the priest said.  "Faites attention!"
 Because the rock was merely resting on the top soil and dried grass, Owen and I, hands and shoulders to the hard, settled mass, had little difficulty sliding it over a foot or more.  Moving the rock revealed an 18-inch diameter hole that penetrated down deep into the earth.

[From Mark 16:3  "They were saying to one another, "Who will roll this stone away for us from the door of the tomb?"]

 

 Furthermore, below is a YouTube connection to the Leon Russell song, "Roll Away the Stone"

 

Page 232 "My comrades and I destroyed a little place outside of Biskra."

A market in Biskra

Roman ruins outside Biskra

From page 232 of the book:  "...My comrades and I destroyed a little place outside of Biskra. It was supposed to be a French army intelligence post. It wasn't. They were all civilians. We killed most of them. They had nothing to do with the war, the poor saps. Whole families were burned alive in their houses. Just shot up and burned out. It was a mess. Your country thought My Lai was a disaster." He shook his head and at last lit his half-cigar. "Americans were such innocents. We left and drove south to Tozeur and Touggourt. When I came back to that town, assigned to a reconnaissance unit, I realized what had been done. These were French people. They were Algerians. They were my brothers, Owen, I murdered my brothers."

Mountains just north of Biskra