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.

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 opposit