And it was another hymn, unknown to us, coming from the German trenches far away on our left.  The singer must have been standing out in the fields on the edge of their line; he must have been moving, coming towards us, and passing slowly along all the enemy’s positions, for his voice came gradually nearer, and became louder and clearer.  Every now and then it ceased, and then hundreds of other voices responded in chorus with some phrases which formed the refrain of the hymn.  Then the soloist began again and came still nearer to us.  He must have come from a considerable distance, for our Chasseurs had already heard him some time before they decided to call me.  Who could this man have been, who must have been sent along the front of the troops to pray, whilst each German company waited for him, so as to join with him in prayer?  Some minister, no doubt, who had come to remind the soldiers of the sanctity of that night and the solemnity of the hour.

Soon we heard the voice coming from the trenches straight in front of us.  In spite of the brightness of the night, we could not distinguish the singer, for the two lines at that point were four hundred yards apart.  But he was certainly not hiding himself, for his deep voice would never have sounded so rich and clear to us had he been singing at the bottom of their trenches.  Again it ceased.  And then the Germans directly in front of us, the soldiers occupying the works opposite ours, those men whom we were bound to kill so soon as they appeared, and whose duty it was to shoot us so soon as we showed ourselves—­those men calmly took up the refrain of the hymn, with its sweet and mysterious words.  They too must have come to the edge of their trench and struck up their hymn with their faces towards us, for their notes came to us clearly and distinctly.

I looked along the line of our trench.  All our men too were awake and looking on.  They had all got on to the ledge, and several had left the trench and were in the field, listening to the unexpected concert.  No one was offended by it; no one laughed at it.  Rather was there a trace of regret in the attitudes and the faces of those who were nearest to me.  And yet it would have been such a simple matter to put an end to that scene; a volley fired by the troop there, and it would all stop, and drop back into the quiet of other nights.  But nobody thought of such a thing.  There was not one of our Chasseurs who would not have considered it a sacrilege to fire upon those praying soldiers.  We felt indeed that there are hours when one can forget that one is there to kill.  This would not prevent us from doing our duty immediately afterwards.

The voice drew farther away, and retreated slowly and majestically towards the trenches situated at the place known as the “Troopers of C.’s” ground, where our two lines approached each other within a distance of fifty yards.  How much more touching the sight must have been from there!  I wished my post had been in that direction, so that I might have been present at the scene, might have heard the words and distinguished the figure of the pastor walking along the parapets made for hurling out death, and blessing those who the next day might be no more.