ness, the rudeness, the kind hearts and the generosity of the
soldiers. These women accept all that comes and are most devoted.

As for Spinoza, whose spirit you already possess, I think that you can
go straight to the last theorems. You will be sure to have intuitive
understanding of what he says about the soul's repose. Yes, those are
moments experienced by us too rarely in our weakness, but they suffice
to let us discover in ourselves, through the blows and buffetings of our
poor human nature, a certain tendency towards what is permanent and
what is final; and we realise the splendid inheritance of divinity to
which we are the heirs.

* * * * *

Dear mother, what a happy day I have just spent with you.

There were three of us: we two and the pretty landscape from my window.

Seen from here, winter gives a woolly and muffled air to things. Two
clouds, or rather mists, wrap the near hillside without taking any
delicacy from the drawing of the shrubs on the crest; the sky is light
green. All is filtered. Everything sleeps. This is the time for
night-attacks, the cries of the charge, the watch in the trenches. Let
our prayers of every moment ask for the end of this state of things. Let
us wish for rest for all, a great amends, recompense for all grief and
pain and separation.

YOUR SON.

_Sunday, November 22, 9.30._

I write to you this morning from my favourite place, without anything
having happened since last night that is worth recording--save perhaps
the thousand flitting nothings in the landscape. I got up with the sun,
which now floods all the space with silver. The cold is still keen, but
by piling on our woollen things we get the better of it on these nights
in billets. There is only this to say: that to-morrow we go to our
trenches in the second line, in the woods that are now thin and
monotonous. Of our three stations, that is the one I perhaps like the
least, because the sky is exiled behind high branches. It is more a
landscape for R----, but flat, and spoilt by the kind of existence that
one leads there.

Hostilities seem to be recommencing in our region with a certain amount
of energy. This morning we can hear a violent fusillade, a thing very
rare in this kind of war, in which attacks are generally made at night,
the day being practically reserved for artillery bombardments.

Dear mother, let us put our hope in the strength of soul which will make
petition each