Monsieur Segotin's Story
purposes,' singly and with our eyes on the ground, through those silent, sunlit streets, afraid to speak to one another, afraid to raise our heads, our ears strained for the crack of the rifle which should shatter the silence or give the signal for a cataclysm. Ah! my good friend, if it was not gay in Saint Hilaire by night, it was not by day either.
"Then our church bells were silenced lest by this means communication with 'the enemy' (as they called our friends) be opened up. God, Who knows all things, may perhaps understand how the ringing of an Angelus could convey information to an 'enemy' that was beyond sound of a shot from the biggest howitzer in the German Army, or what information it could carry save that we still believed in Him; but this mystery was as far beyond our comprehension as 'the enemy' was beyond sound of our bells. And so we lost yet another source of consolation. For, believe me, my friend, there are conditions of existence in which the voice of a church bell can carry a message that is not without its value to those who hear it, even though that value be not connected with military affairs.
"It was also forbidden to us to approach, on any pretext, the sick or wounded, even the dead, belonging to the German armies, or the prisoners of war who were under the protection—save the mark!—of the German armies. Not even by an occasional act of kindness to a suffering or a miserable man might we relieve our burdened hearts. To testify by so much as a cigarette, by so much as a cheering word
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