"The beggars glide about noiselessly in the dark, like serpents. Impossible to hear them coming. Before you are aware they are upon you, cutting your throat with the big knife they hold between their teeth...." "_Bigre!_ Lucky for us they're on our side." But where has Jacquard, who has never travelled beyond the neighbourhoods of the Rue de Sentier and Levallois-Perret, obtained such detailed information about the warlike habits of these distant peoples? Meanwhile there is a dead calm; they forget to relieve us. The section returns to Bucy after forty hours' outpost duty. We quarter in a half-ruined house which contains scarcely enough room to lie down in. We sleep in higgledy-piggledy fashion with our comrades, the feet of one man against the face of another, and vice versa. _Sunday, 27th December._ No means of returning to the Achains', the company being fixed up at the other extremity of the village. I knock at the door of the Ronchards, the brother and sister who showed us hospitality one afternoon last month. They place at our disposal a large well-warmed room, where we can all six sleep on an enormous litter of straw. Mademoiselle Ronchard has not yet recovered from her disappointment at our not eating her rabbit stew. The stove begins to roar and we come back to life again. A detail: we find ourselves covered with fleas. An energetic hunt commences. It is not without results. We hear a voice in the street and rush out. The Montagne farm is a mass of flame, the result of a bombardment which has lasted several hours. The entire hill is illumined; even from this distance we can hear the roar of the fire. Beams fall to the ground and flames of fire rise into the air. Dark silhouettes are seen in the neighbourhood. Without a word we gaze long at the sinister spectacle. Some one simply remarks-- "The pity of it all!" We return to the Ronchards. _Monday, 28th December._ Thaw and rain, creating mud and all the old troubles over again. We remain indoors at the Ronchards'. How calm and quiet this evening! There are six of us, feet in slippers, sitting round the table. Some are reading, others writing by the soft light of a lamp. Are we the same persons who, only the day before yesterday, were wallowing in the trench between two walls of mud? Are we really at war, at the front, with the enemy less than a mile away? Our friends and relatives, whose letters betray constant anxiety on our behalf, invariably imagine us in the thick of the fight. If only they could know, this very moment, that we are in such comfortable quarters, that there is such an element of peace in our sad surroundings! The howling wind makes us appreciate by contrast the joy of being under cover. The distant firing sounds like the noise made by a cart as it jolts along over the pavings. _Tuesday, 29th December._