ound. Pleasant weather. At night we go to the
surface for our hard work.

Dearest, I wanted to say a heap of things about our joys, but some of
them are best left quiet, unawakened. All coarse, common pleasure would
frighten them away--they might die.

I am writing again after a sleep. We get all the sleep we can in our
dug-outs.

I had a pile of thoughts that fatigue prevents my putting in order; but
I remember that I evoked Beethoven. I am now precisely at the age he had
reached when disaster came upon him; and I admired his great example,
his energies at work in spite of suffering. The impediment must have
seemed to him as grave as what is before me seems to us; but he
conquered. To my mind Beethoven is the most magnificent of human
translations of the creative Power.

I am writing badly, for I am still asleep.

How easy, how kind were all the circumstances of my return! I left the
house alone, but passing a battery of artillery I was accosted by the
non-commissioned officers with offers of the most friendly hospitality.
The artillery are devoted to the Tenth, for we defend them; and as the
good fellows are not even exposed to the rain they pity us exceedingly.

I must close abruptly, loving you for your courage that so sustains me.
Whatever happens, I have recovered joy. The night I came was so lovely!

_March 26._

DEARLY BELOVED MOTHER,--Nothing new in our position; the organising goes
on. Interesting but not easy work. The fine weather prospers it. Now and
again our pickaxes come upon a poor dead man whom the war harasses even
in his grave.

_March 28_ (on the heights; a grey
Sunday; weather broken by
yesterday's bombardment).

We are again in full fight. A great attack from our side has repeated
the carnage of last week. My company, which was cut up in the last
assault, was spared this time; we had nothing to do but occupy a sector
of the defence. So we got only the splashes of the fighting.

On the loveliest Saturday of this spring I had a distant view of the
battle; I saw the crawling beast that a battalion looks like, twisting
as it advances under the smoke of the guns. The _chasseurs a pied_ go
forward in spite of the machine-guns and of the bombardment, French and
German. These fine fellows did what they had to do in spite of all, and
have made amends for the check we had last week when our attack was a
failure.

For a month past I have been living Raffet's lithographs, with this
differ