up in my mind the picture of the Christmas Eve they were keeping, too, at that same hour, at the other end of France.  And the dear, good friends I had left in Paris and in Rouen—­where were they at that moment?  What were they doing?  Were they thinking of me?  How I should have liked to enjoy the wonderful power possessed by certain heroes in the Arabian Nights, which would have allowed me to see at that moment a vision of the loved ones far away.  Were they talking about me, sitting together round the fire?  I thought that this war had been a splendid thing to us Chasseurs as long as we were fighting as cavalry, scouring the plains, searching the woods, galloping in advance of our infantry, and bringing them information which enabled them to deal their blows or parry those of the enemy, trying to come up with the Prussian cavalry which fled before us.  But this trench warfare, this warfare in which one stays for days and days in the same position, in which ground is gained yard by yard, in which artifice tries to outdo artifice, in which each side clings to the ground it has won, digs into it, buries itself in it, and dies in it sooner than give it up!  What warfare for cavalry!  We have devoted ourselves to it with all our hearts, and the chiefs who have had us under their orders have never failed to commend us; but at times we feel very weary, and during inaction and solitude our imaginations begin to work.  Then we recall our regiment in full gallop over field and plain; we hear the clank of swords and bits; we see once more the flash of the blades, the motley line of the horses; we evoke the well-known figures of our chiefs on their chargers.  That night my mind became more restless than ever before; it broke loose, it leapt away, and lived again the unforgettable stages of this war:  Charleroi, Guise, the Marne, the defence of the Jaulgonne bridge, Montmirail, Reims, ...  Belgium, Bixschoote; and then it fell back into the gloomy dug-out where the flame of the single candle traced disquieting shadows on the wall.

Suddenly a cold breath of air blew into my retreat.  The door opened abruptly, and at the top of the steps a man, stooping over the floor of the passage, called me in an undertone: 

“Mon Lieutenant, come and see....  Something is happening....”

With a bound, I sprang from my shelter and climbed up the ledge.

“Listen, mon Lieutenant.”

That night in the trenches was destined to overwhelm me with astonishment, and this one surpassed all that I could imagine.  I should like to be able to impart the extraordinary impression I felt; but one would have to have been there that night to be capable of realising it.  Over that vast and silent plain, in which everything seemed to sleep and where no other sound was heard, there resounded from afar a voice whose notes, in spite of the distance, reached our ears.  What an extraordinary thing it was!  That song, vibrating through the boundless night, made our hearts beat and stirred us more than the most perfectly ordered concert given by the most famous singers.