to themselves
can hardly die. I was well in front of the first lines, and never did I
feel better protected. This morning, when I came, a pink and green
sunrise over the blue and rosy snow; the open country marked with woods
and covered fields; far off, the distance, in which the silvery Meuse
fades away. O Beauty, in spite of all!

_February 2._

DEAR BELOVED MOTHER,--Your letter of the 29th has this moment come to
the billet. A nameless day, a day without form, yet a day in which the
spring most mysteriously begins to stir. Warm air in the lengthening
days; a sudden softening, a weakening of Nature. Alas, how sweet this
emotion would be if it could be felt outside this slavery, but the
weakness which comes ordinarily with spring only serves here to make
burdens heavier.

Dear mother, how glad I am to feel the sympathy of those who are far
away. Ah, what sweetness there is!

I am delighted by the Reviews; in an admirable article on Louis Veuillot
I noticed this phrase: 'O my God, take away my despair and leave my
grief!' Yes, we must not misunderstand the fruitful lesson taught by
grief, and if I return from this war it will most certainly be with a
soul formed and enriched.

I also read with pleasure the lectures on Moliere, and in him, as
elsewhere, I have viewed again the solitude in which the highest souls
wander. But I owe it to my old sentimental wounds never to suffer again
through the acts of others. My dearly loved mother, I will write to you
better to-morrow.

_February 4._

Last night, on coming back to the barn, drunkenness, quarrels, cries,
songs and yells. Such is life!. . . But when morning came and the
wakening from sleep still brought me memories of this, I got up before
the time, and found outside a friendly moon, and the great night taking
wing, and a dawn which had pity on me. The blessed spring day gilds
everything and scatters its promises and hopes.

Dear, I was reflecting on Tolstoi's title, _War and Peace_. I used to
think that he wanted to express the antithesis of these two states, but
now I ask myself if he did not connect these two contraries in one and
the same folly--if the fortunes of humanity, whether at war or at peace,
were not equally a burden to his mind. By all means let us keep faithful
to our efforts to be good; but in spite of ourselves we take this
precept a little in the sense of the placards: 'Be good to animals.' How
hard it is, in the midst of daily duties, t