one misery more amongst
all the various miseries which form the web and woof of social
existence. Those who can be astonished about it are those only who stand
sheltered from naked realities. And the little girl with her precocious
experience who understood the struggle for one's daily bread--_panem
quotidianum_ ... (God does not grant it for nothing!)--revealed to her
_bourgeois_ friend the murderous war which, for poor folks and
particularly for women, reigns cunningly deep and without a truce below
the lie of peace. She did not talk too much about it, however, for fear
of depressing him: on seeing the excitement into which her accounts
threw him, she had an affectionate feeling of her own superiority. Like
most women she did not entertain with regard to certain ugly facts of
life the physical and moral disgust which upset the young fellow. There
was nothing of the rebel in her. In still worse circumstances she would
have been able to accept repugnant tasks without repugnance and quit
them quite calm and natty, without a stain. Today she could not do that
any more, for since she had come to know Pierre her love had caused her
to be filled with the tastes and distastes of her friend; but that was
not her fundamental nature. Calm and smiling by reason of her race, not
pessimistic at all. Melancholy, and the grand detached airs of life were
not her business. Life is as it is. Let us take it as it is! It might
have been worse! The hazards of an existence which Luce had always known
to be precarious, on the look-out for expedients--and particularly since
the war--had taught her to be careless of the morrow. Add to this that
every preoccupation concerning the beyond was a stranger to this free
little French girl. Life was enough for her. Luce found life delightful,
but it all hangs by a thread and it takes so little to make the thread
break that really it is not worth the trouble to torment oneself about
what may turn up tomorrow. Eyes of mine, drink in the daylight that
bathes you as you pass! As to what may come after, O, my heart, abandon
yourself in confidence to the stream!... And since anyhow we can not do
otherwise!... And now that we love each other, isn't it just delicious?
Luce well knew that it could not be for long. But neither her life nor
she herself, either, would be for long....

She did not resemble much that little fellow who loved her and whom she
loved, tender, ardent and nervous, happy and miserable, who