Ping!  A shot was heard....

The stupid bullet which had perhaps found its mark?  At once there was dead silence, not a cry, not an oath, not a groan.  Some one had thought he was doing well by firing on that man.  A pity!  We should gain nothing by preventing them from keeping Christmas in their own way, and it would have been a nobler thing to reserve our blows for other hecatombs.  I know that the barbarians would not have hesitated had they been in our place, and that so many of our priests had fallen under their strokes that they could not reasonably have reproached us.  There are people who will say that our hatred should embrace everything German; that we should be implacable towards everything bearing that name, and spare none of the execrated race which has been the cause of so many tears, so much blood, so much mourning.  Never mind!...  I think in this case it would have been better not to have shot....

A shot fired, not far from us, on our left brought me up from my shelter.  It seemed strange after the complete calm of that night.  It was seven o’clock.  The sun was magnificent, and had already bathed the deserted plain, the fields, the heights of S., and the ruined village.  In the distance, towards the east, the towers of the cathedral of R. stood out proudly against the golden sky.  I looked and saw all my Chasseurs standing on the ledges watching with interest a scene which seemed to be going on in front of the trenches occupied on our left by the Territorials.

I got up by the side of one of them, and he explained to me what was happening.

“Mon Lieutenant, it’s the infantry fellows who have just killed a hare that ran between the two lines, and they’re going to fetch it....”

And in fact I saw this strange sight:  two men had gone out in full daylight from their trenches and were advancing with hesitating steps towards the enemy’s.  Behind them were a hundred inquisitive heads, looking out above the embrasures arranged between the sacks of earth.  A few soldiers, who had come out of the trench, were even sitting on the bank of chalky earth.  It was certainly such a scene as I had hardly expected to witness.  What was the captain of the company occupying the trench doing?

But my astonishment became stupefaction when I saw the hundreds of heads that fringed the enemy’s trenches.  I at once sent G. and a non-commissioned officer with the following order to all our men: 

“No one is to show himself....  Every man to his fighting post!...  Carbines loaded and ready to fire!”

The Germans opposite became suspicious on seeing our line so silent, and no man showing himself; they, too, waited on the alert behind their loopholes.  But along the rest of their front their men kept on coming out from their trenches unarmed, and making merry and friendly gestures.  I became uneasy, and wondered how this unexpected comedy might end.  Ought I to have those men fired upon who were not quite opposite to us, and whose opponents seemed rather inclined to make a Christmas truce?