and at the first signal would have been ready to open fire with their terrible engines of destruction.  In the centre of the block-house a padded sentry-box was arranged made of a number of sand-bags, in which, by means of a loophole, the officer of the watch could observe the whole sector entrusted to us; and by means of a telephone station, close at hand, he could communicate at any moment with the commander of the sector at the glass-works.

G. had put on the goatskin coat handed to him by the officer he relieved.  This officer was a Second-Lieutenant of Territorials, and looked completely frozen.

“Here, my dear fellow,” he said, “I leave you the goatskin provided for the use of the officer on duty.  I should have liked to give it you well warmed, but I feel like an icicle myself.”

G. was nevertheless glad to have it.  After wishing him good luck, I left him to get back to my hut, for, in spite of my cloak, the frost was taking hold of me too.  The faithful Wattrelot had done his best to keep our little stove going.  Profiting by La G.’s example, I stretched myself on two chairs, with my feet towards the fire.  I gradually got warmer, and at the same time somewhat melancholy.  What a curious Christmas Eve!  Certainly I had never passed one in such a place.  The walls were made of a greyish, friable earth, which still showed the marks of the pick that had been used for the excavation.  The furniture was simple and not very comfortable.  At the back was the bed, made out of a little straw already well tossed over by a number of sleepers.  This straw was kept in by a plank fixed to the ground and forming the side of the modest couch.  Against the wall, opposite the stove, was the table.  This table, which had to serve for writing and feeding, and perhaps for a game of cards, this table, which was required to fill the part of all the tables of all the rooms of any house, was, strange to say, a night-table.  I wondered who had brought it there, and who had chosen it.  But, such as it was, it served its purpose pretty well.  We used it for dinner, and found it almost comfortable, and upon it I signed a number of reports and orders.  Together with the two chairs, the stove, the bed, and some nails to hang my clothes on, that table completed the furniture of the “home” where I meditated on that December night.  The candle, stuck in a bottle, flickered at the slightest breath, and threw strange shadows on the walls.

It was the hour of solitude and silence, the hour of meditation and of sadness too now and then.  That evening dark thoughts were flying about in that smoky den, assailing me in crowds, and taking possession of my mind; I could not drive them away.  It was one of those moments—­those very fleeting moments!—­when courage seems to fail, and one gives way with a kind of bitter satisfaction.  I remembered that months and months had passed since I had seen any of those belonging to me, and I conjured