that you too have abandoned all human attachment, will walk
freely in this life, closed to all ordinary relations.

I don't regret my new rank; it has brought me many troubles but a great
deal of experience, and, as a matter of fact, some ameliorations.

So I want to continue to live as fully as possible in this moment, and
that will be all the easier for me if I can feel that you have brought
yourself to the idea that my present life cannot in any way be lost.

I did not tell you enough what pleasure the _Revues Hebdomadaires_ gave
me. I found some extracts from that speech on Lamartine which I am
passionately fond of. Circumstances led this poet to give to his art
only the lowest place. Life in general closed him round, imposing on his
great heart a more serious and immediate task than that which awaited
his genius.

_January 15_ (in a new billet), 12.30 P.M.

We no longer have any issue whatever in sight.

My only sanction is in my conscience. We must confide ourselves to an
impersonal justice, independent of any human factor, and to a useful and
harmonious destiny, in spite of the horrors of its form.

_January 17, afternoon_ (in a billet).

What shall I say to you on this strange January afternoon, when thunder
is followed by snow?

Our billet provides us with many commodities, but above all with an
intoxicating beauty and poetry. Imagine a lake in a park sheltered by
high hills, and a castle, or, rather, a splendid country house. We lodge
in the domestic offices, but I don't need any wonderful home comforts
to perfect the dream-like existence that I have led here for three days.
Last night we were visited by some singers. We were very far from the
music that I love, but the popular and sentimental tunes were quite able
to replace a finer art, because of the ardent conviction of the singer.
The workman who sang these songs, which were decent, in fact moral (a
rather questionable moral, perhaps, but still a moral), so put his soul
into it that the timbre of his voice was altogether too moving for our
hostesses. Here are the ideal people: perhaps their ideal may be said
not to exist and to be purely negative, but months of suffering have
taught me to honour it.

I have just seen that Charles Peguy died at the beginning of the war.
How terribly French thought will have been mown down! What surpasses our
understanding (and yet what is only natural) is that civilians are able
to continue their normal life