"I wonder--if I'm dreaming?" "Why?" "I thought I heard...." "Well?" "Firing!" I listened attentively. No, there was nothing. I chaffed him on his hallucinations! Was he profiting by Ravelli's teaching? Firing indeed! An excellent joke! We had left the enemy more than a hundred and thirty miles behind. Guillaumin did not persist. The time which had been fixed passed by. Then we were told that we should be there for another two hours. I left the railway lines and went off into the open fields. I noticed that our convoy was not the only one which had been stopped there. The black line stretched away as far as eye could see, bordered with a swarm of uniforms, and smoking bonfires. The line was badly blocked. As I had plenty of time before me, the idea occurred to me of climbing the nearest hill. I followed a chalky path. I had imagined that this crest was quite near by, and that I should reach it without any difficulty. I only breasted it after twenty minutes of breathless climbing. * * * * * A violent north wind lashed me, up there, and dried my perspiration. A vast panorama lay before me: a series of desolate-looking humps covered the ground, some of them bristling with vine poles, supporting the good Champagne grapes. I took my bearings. Just to the south, I made out the blue ridge of the more important hills, a sort of promontory where I thought an army might have got a good hold. I turned towards the west, a lifeless, colourless stretch of country. The railway line with its telegraph posts disappeared between two low hillocks on that side. But I thought I could make out the haze and dust rising from a big town. Yes--when I looked harder--there was a purple phantom, the silhouette of a building, hardly discernible in the mist, which little by little grew more distinct--those towers superb in their grace and strength. In my wonder, I named it aloud--Rheims Cathedral. By some strange chance I had forgotten that this Presence was so near at hand, though on getting into the train that day before, I had vaguely hoped that fate might lead us to it. My veneration for this most sacred of all shrines dated from my earliest childhood when I had admired a picture of it reproduced in my prayer-book. Abbé Ygonel, my first teacher, had sung the praises of its magnificent harmony in striking terms. I had made of this erection the centre round which gravitated the whole of our history, enchanting as a legend. I had only once been to see it. I had gone to Rheims for a football match, and before and after the game had left my comrades, and had gone all alone to reflect on the faith which reared the poem of this portal and these towers.