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