filing. To-day, sun on the
snow. The beauty of the snow was deeply moving, though certainly we had
some bad days, days on which there was nothing for us but the wretched
mud.

It seems that we won't be coming back to this pretty billet. Evidently
they are making ready for something; the regularity of our winter
existence has come to an end.

_2 o'clock._

Splendid weather, herald of the spring, and we can make the most of it,
because in this place we are allowed to put our noses out of doors.

I write badly to-day. I can only send you my love. This war is long, and
I can't even speak of patience.

My only happiness is that during these five and a half months I have so
often been able to tell you that everything was not ugliness. . . .

_January 23._

. . . As for me, I have no desires left. When my trials are really hard to
bear, I rest content with my own unhappiness, without facing other
things.

When they become less hard, then I begin to think, to dream, and the
past that is dear to me seems to have that same remote poetry which in
happier days drew my thoughts to distant countries. A familiar street,
or certain well-known corners, spring suddenly to my mind--just as in
other days islands of dreams and legendary countries used to rise at the
call of certain music and verse. But now there is no need of verse or
music; the intensity of dear memories is enough.

I have not even any idea of what a new life could be; I only know that
we are making life here and now.

For whom, and for what age? It hardly matters. What I do know, and what
is affirmed in the very depths of my being, is that this harvest of
French genius will be safely stored, and that the intellect of our race
will not suffer for the deep cuts that have been made in it.

Who will say that the rough peasant, comrade of the fallen thinker, will
not be the inheritor of his thoughts? No experience can falsify this
magnificent intuition. The peasant's son who has witnessed the death of
the young scholar or artist will perhaps take up the interrupted work,
be perhaps a link in the chain of evolution which has been for a moment
suspended. This is the real sacrifice: to renounce the hope of being
the torch-bearer. To a child in a game it is a fine thing to carry the
flag; but for a man, it is enough to know that the flag will yet be
carried. And that is what every moment of great august Nature brings
home to me. Every moment reassures my heart: N