But enough! My eyes can bear no more. And I hasten away from this scene, over which, like the sound of mighty organs, the great guns chant their huge and terrible chorus.
To free ourselves from this nightmare we went to visit the gunners in their shelters. It was three in the afternoon, and we had only just discovered that we had not yet lunched. A big fellow, who chattered like a magpie and was built like a Hercules, lit two candles for us, stirred the fire which was crackling in an earthen stove, spread a newspaper for our table-cloth, and offered us a seat on a case of jam-jars. Our sandwiches seemed delicious; our tea, the best in the world; our hovel, a palace; our candles, an illumination.
A joy, hitherto unknown, in being merely alive gave a priceless quality to the smallest pleasures of existence. We listened with the most intense interest and an unaccustomed delight to the talkative soldier, while he instructed us about the price of sugar in England.
Meanwhile, his battery, just beside us, went on killing Germans.
The spirit of Dickens hovered over that wretched hut.
Suddenly I noticed that my companion had fallen into a brown study, and I fancied that he was back upon that hill by Beaucourt. "Come, come!" I said. "What are you thinking about now?"
"I am thinking," the Englishman replied, "that we are bound to avoid war if we can, but that when war comes we are bound to meet it like men."
4. A FRANCO BRITISH RELIEF.