"Never a Bosche!" he declared.
Our glance probed each particle of ground. There was nothing suspicious, in the plain, or on the roads, which looked like huge ribbons. The enemy appeared to have melted away. Our field of view increased, the shadows were dispersing, and the horizon seemed to recoil. Still nothing to be seen.
"They must 'ave 'ad a scare."
Our mission was apparently at an end. It was up to the aeroplanes to take observations of the enemy's new positions. One of the war-birds happened to be flying over yonder at that moment, but we were undeceived when it approached, and we recognised a Taube.
"Let's be getting back!"
"Say, Sergeant, the country's not so dusty!"
Touched and curious, did we foresee the miracle with which daybreak was to endow us?
Here was the luminous veil of the aërial vault above us being rent and scattered. Shreds of the more transparent vapours still floated in the air, but the depths had ceased to look so uniformly dust-coloured. It was not long before cracks and then fissures and then chasms were hollowed in the clouds, and the liquid blue shone out between them bathed in a diaphanous radiance. The true sky smiled at last. The fleecy clouds dispersed and vanished, a few of them lingered in the form of scarfs, so attenuated that they looked like modest nebulas. The scintillation of the stars pierced through them. They would only shine for a moment and then pale in the growing daylight, but it was enough that they had reminded the mortals, saddened by the opaque and misty night, of their existence.
The whole of spring glowed resplendent in this summer dawn. Newly awakened chaffinches chirruped and chased each other at the edge of the wood. The luscious green countryside, a sight to gladden the eyes, exhaled the fragrance of recent harvest mingled with the resinous perfume of the firs and larches sown among the beeches round about us. Now the entire firmament was clear and serene, suggested in fluctuating colouring which changed by harmonious gradations from a mauve verging on violet, in which the western sky was bathed, to the pale phosphorescence, which, on the opposite horizon heralded the approach of Apollo. On that side the mists accumulated in the recesses of the valleys, evaporated more quickly, and rose up impalpable, the incense of the earth. Unsuspected ridges appeared. Through an opening between the two crests my wandering gaze could glide towards a blue distance, infinite as the ocean.
A plain, a different region, seemed to open out down there. It occurred to me that the Woevre might lie in that direction. Yes, we must have reached the confines of the valley of the Meuse. Yonder my brother had fallen. I made a vague attempt to recall my sorrow and rancour, to connect my present mission with that of the army and my nation. My consciousness repelled these fierce imaginings. Taking a deep breath I inhaled the woodland scents. I chewed a stalk of grass, and dangled a corn-flower picked on the other side of the slope. I naïvely congratulated myself on being present, in the womb of nature, at the birth of each dawn, with which I, as a civilised being, had rejoiced my eyes too seldom.