while we are in torment. I saw in the _Cri
de Paris_, which drifted as far as here, a list of concert programmes.
What a contrast! However, mother dear, the essential thing is to have
known beauty in moments of grace.

The weather is frightful, but one can feel the coming of spring. At a
time like this nothing can speak of individual hope, only of great
general certainties.

_January 19._

We have been since yesterday in our second line positions; we came to
them in marvellous snow and frost. A furious sky, with charming rosy
colour in it, floated over the visionary forest in the snow; the trees,
limpid blue low down, brown and fretted above, the earth white.

I have received two parcels; the _Chanson de Roland_ gives me infinite
pleasure--particularly the Introduction, treating of the national epic
and of the Mahabharata which, it seems, tells of the fight between the
spirits of good and evil.

I am happy in your lovely letters. As for the sufferings which you
forebode for me, they are really very tolerable.

But what we must recognise, and without shame, is that we are a
_bourgeois_ people. We have tasted of the honey of civilisation--poisoned
honey, no doubt. But no, surely that sweetness is true, and we should
not be called upon to make of our ordinary existence a preparation for
violence. I know that violence may be salutary to us, especially if in
the midst of it we do not lose sight of normal order and calm.

Order leads to eternal rest. Violence makes life go round. We have, for
our object, order and eternal rest; but without the violence which lets
loose reserves of energy, we should be too inclined to consider order as
already attained. But anticipated order can only be a lethargy which
retards the coming of positive order.

Our sufferings arise only from our disappointment in this delay; the
coming of true order is too long for human patience. In any case,
however suffering, we would rather not be doers of violence. It is as
when matter in fusion solidifies too quickly and in the wrong shape: it
has to be put to the fire again. This is the part violence plays in
human evolution; but that salutary violence must not make us forget what
our aesthetic citizenship had acquired in the way of perdurable peace and
harmony. But our suffering comes precisely from the fact that we do not
forget it!

_January 20, morning._

Do not think that I ever deprive myself of sleep. In that matter our
regiment is