e
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.

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 b