It was the voice of bells in some village church.
I stood there, unmoving, listening to this chant of the bells wafting through the woods, where night and day men faced one another, seeking to kill each other.
Their message was not sad. From the heights of the heavens wherein it resounds it spreads widely over earth and men alike. The Germans in their trenches hear it, as we hear it, but the bells speak not to them as they speak to us.
To us they say:
"Hope, sons of France! I am near you, the voice of all the firesides you have left behind. To each one of you I bring a vision of that corner of the earth where the heart remains. Confidence be with you for ever, sons of France, confidence and strength for ever. I sing the life immortal of the Fatherland."
To them they say:
"Madmen who believed that France could die! Hear me! Above the little church, whose stained-glass windows lie in fragments on the pavements, the belfry still stands. It is the belfry that sends me to you, laughing and mocking. Through me it is the village that defies you. I see…. I see … whatever you have done, I see. Whatever you may do, I shall see. I am not afraid of you. Because I know that the day will come when the cock on the steeple, staring unflinchingly towards the far horizon, will see you in desperate flight, while the innumerable bodies of your slain shall lie thick over the land!"
Night. Letters have been brought to me. One of the envelopes contains sorrow for me. I have learnt that a friend is dead.
And I welcome the darkness. Its blackness cannot be too black for me; I have even hidden myself at the bottom of the trench, because a diffused light wanders amid the boles of the age-old trees before it; and welcome also is the silence of night. Near me an occasional furtive movement reveals the presence of men who are watching. Nothing else. Not even firing in the far distance. I open my eyes in the blackness and see again the living face of my friend, frank, eyes clear and loyal, mouth slightly disdainful, beneath a closely-clipped moustache.
The news has shocked me greatly. A torpor steals over me; the blood beats violently in my temples; I am fevered. And suddenly I hear a murmur, very low, very far away, indefinable. Am I dreaming? Two soldiers, perhaps, gossiping somewhere close at hand. Yes, they are the voices of men I hear, but now they are silent. My head is burning, and still the blood thunders in my temples without a pause. Then the murmur recommences, the same as it was before. It increases; someone is speaking. I cannot distinguish the words, yet the voice is familiar to me: I know it well. But how distant it is! It seems to resound far away in space, beyond the reach of my senses; it rises from obscure depths within me; it awakens in me what is most intimate in the dead past! Low and soft, it is the voice of my friend!