The hours pass. Impossible to advance. The fusillade, intense to right and left, slackens in front. Some of the men fall asleep on the spot. Night comes on. The cannonade and the firing almost cease. A cold, clear night and a starry sky. Profound calm. Seven o'clock. The lieutenant orders our half-section back into the trench. The 24th has been dealt with severely--thirty dead and twenty wounded. Shall we be relieved to-night? It is sufficiently dark for us to move about behind the trenches and remove the numbness from our limbs. "Look out, Jouin is there," says Parvis. It is usual to continue to call the dead by their names. We form a circle round the body, touch one another on the shoulder and shake hands. We are the more conscious of the value of life from the fact that its tenure in our own bodies is so uncertain. Mignard, a cover flung over his shattered head, still lies at the bottom of the trench. We shall have to raise him and place him by Jouin's side in the field of beetroots, unless we wish to spend the night with him. He is very heavy. The cold touch of his lifeless hands sends a thrill through my whole body. But very soon sleep alone occupies our thoughts. The lieutenant remains awake. He looks over the parapet without once removing his eyes. Reymond rolls himself in his cover; I do the same. We throw over our bodies the big poncho, and, close pressed to each other, sleep at the bottom of the trench. _Friday, 13th November._ About two in the morning some one gives me a shake-- "Come along; it's your turn to keep watch over there among the beetroots." There is a smile on the lieutenant's face as he adds in grumbling accents-- "I never heard any one snore as you do!" I take up my post, lying flat on the ground, at a distance of fifty yards in front of the trench. I do all I can think of to keep awake. There is a dense mist over the land. After a couple of hours I am relieved. It is raining, of course! The daybreak is dull and unpleasant. Are we to attack again? No. Yesterday we only had to create a diversion, so the lieutenant explains, and compel the Germans to direct their fire upon our sector. This artillery fire has been sprinkling the plain ever since eight o'clock. The shells shriek overhead and burst away to our left. We remark, jokingly-- "That's nothing; the 21st will catch it all." During the night a section of the 23rd company, remaining in reserve, has linked up our trench, by means of a branch, with the rear trenches. We are delighted at the idea that we shall no longer have to crawl over exposed country. The day seems as though it would never end, and nothing happens. Reymond and I, tired out, and seated side by side in a sort of sofa hollowed out in the trench wall, feel not the slightest inclination even to speak. At night the 23rd replaces us and the 24th retires to the grotto. On reaching it, after forty minutes in the branches, the grotto seems more than ever a paradise to us all.