solemnly--he is a stupid fool--and said, "There is no paper."

May 4.--It looks like a white robe. There was a strong smell of
incense to-day in the trench. No one seemed to notice it. There is
decidedly a white robe, and I think I can see feet, passing very
slowly before me at this moment while I write.

There is no space here for continuous extracts from Karl Heinz's diary.
But to condense with severity, it would seem that he slowly gathered
about himself a complete set of sensory hallucinations. First the
auditory hallucination of the sound of a bell, which the doctor called
tinnitus. Then a patch of white growing into a white robe, then the
smell of incense. At last he lived in two worlds. He saw his trench,
and the level before it, and the English lines; he talked with his
comrades and obeyed orders, though with a certain difficulty; but he
also heard the deep boom of St. Lambart's bell, and saw continually
advancing towards him a white procession of little children, led by a
boy who was swinging a censer. There is one extraordinary entry: "But
in August those children carried no lilies; now they have lilies in
their hands. Why should they have lilies?"

It is interesting to note the transition over the border line. After
May 2 there is no reference in the diary to bodily illness, with two
notable exceptions. Up to and including that date the sergeant knows
that he is suffering from illusions; after that he accepts his
hallucinations as actualities. The man who cannot see what he sees and
hear what he hears is a fool. So he writes: "I ask who is singing 'Ave
Maria Stella.' That blockhead Friedrich Schumacher raises his crest and
answers insolently that no one sings, since singing is strictly
forbidden for the present."