. . . Tormenting anxiety can sometimes be mistaken for an alert
conscience.

_December 16._

Yesterday in our shelter I got out your little album--very much damaged,
alas--and I tried to copy some of the lines of the landscape. I was
stopped by the cold, and I was returning dissatisfied when I suddenly
had the idea of making one of my friends sit for me. How can I tell you
what a joy it was to get a good result! I believe that my little pencil
proved entirely successful. The sketch has been sent away in a letter to
some friend of his. It was such a true joy to me to feel I had not lost
my faculty.

_December 17_ (in a new billet).

. . . Last night we left behind all that was familiar when we came out of
the first-line trenches after three days of perfect peace there. We were
told off to the billet which we occupied on October 6th and 7th. One
can feel in the air the wind of change. I don't know what may come, but
the serenity of the weather to-day seems an augury of happiness.

These have been days of marvellous scenes, which I can appreciate better
now than during those few days of discouragement, which came because I
allowed myself to reckon things according to our miserable human
standards.

I write to you by a window from which I watch the sunset. You see that
goodness is everywhere for us.

_3 o'clock._

. . . I take up this letter once more in the twilight of an exceptional
winter: the day fades away as calmly as it came. I am watching the women
washing clothes under the lines of trees on the river bank; there is
peace everywhere--I think even in our hearts. Night falls. . . .

_December 19_ (in a billet).

A sweet day, ending here round the table. Quiet, drawing, music. I can
think with calm of the length of the days to come when I realise how
swift have been these days that are past. Half the month is gone, and
Christmas comes in the midst of war. The only thing for me is to adapt
myself entirely to these conditions of existence, and, owing to my union
with you, to gain a degree of acceptance which is of an order higher
than human courage.

_December 21, morning._

MY VERY DEAR MOTHER,--I have told you freely in my letters of my
happiness; but the rock ahead of happiness is that poor humanity is in
perpetual fear of losing it. In spite of all experience, we do not
realise that in the eternal scheme of things a new happiness always
grows at the side of an old one.

For myself, I have