gardens to see the sun. All is light, peace
falling from on high upon the deserted country.

I come back to our room, where the brass of the pretty Meusian beds and
the carved wood of the cupboards shine in the half-light. All these
things have suffered through the rough use the soldiers put them to, but
we have real comfort here. We have found table-implements and a
dinner-service, and for two days running we made chocolate in a
soup-tureen. Luxury!

O dear mother, if God allows me the joy of returning, what youth will
this extraordinary time have brought back to me! As I wrote to my friend
P----, I lead the life of a child in the midst of people so simple that
even my rudimentary existence is complicated in comparison with my
surroundings.

Mother dear, the length of this war tries our power of passive will, but
I feel that everything is coming out as I was able to foresee. I think
that these long spells of inactivity will give repose to the
intellectual machine. If I ever have the happiness of once more making
use of mine, it is sure to take a little time to get moving again, but
with what new vigour! My last work was one of pure thought, and my
ambition, which all things justify, is to give a more plastic form to my
thought as it develops.

_Sunday, December 27, 9 o'clock_
(5th day in the first line).

It appears that the terrible position, courageously held by us on
October 14th, and immediately lost by our successors, has been retaken,
and 200 metres more, but at the price of a hundred casualties.

Dear mother, want of sleep robs me of all intelligence. True, one needs
little of that for the general run of existence here, but I should have
liked to speak to you. The only consolation is that our love needs no
expression.

Very little to tell you. I was quite stupefied by the day's work
yesterday, spent entirely in darkness. From my place I had only a
glimpse of a pretty tree against the sky.

To-day, in the charming early morning I saw a beautiful and extremely
brilliant star. I had gone to fetch some coal and water, and on the way
back, when daylight had already come, that extraordinary star still
persisted. My corporal, who, like me, was dodging from bush to bush back
to our house, said:

'Do you know what that star is? It is the sign for the enemy's patrol to
rally.'

It was true, and at first I felt outraged at this profanation of the
sky, and then (apart from the ingenuity of the thing) I told