re so beautifully
defined!--the road bordered with trees diminishing towards the frontier,
hills, and beyond them misty heights which one guesses to be the German
Vosges. There is the scenery, and here is something better than the
scenery. There is a Beethoven melody and a piece by Liszt called
'Benediction de Dieu dans la solitude.' Certainly we have no solitude,
but if you turn the pages of Albert Samain's poems you will find an
aphorism by Villiers de l'Isle-Adam: 'Know that there will always be
solitude on earth for those who are worthy of it.' This solitude of a
soul that can ignore all that is not in tune with it. . . .

I have had two letters from you, of the 6th and 7th. Perhaps this
evening I shall have another. Do not let us allow our courage to be
concerned only with the waiting for letters from each other. But the
letters are our life, they are what bring us our joys, our happiness, it
is through them that we take delight in the sights of this world and of
this time.

If your eyes are not strong, that is a reason for not writing, but apart
from your health do not by depriving me of letters hold back your heart
from me.

_November 14_ (2nd letter).

DEAR MOTHER WHOM I LOVE,--Here we are again in our usual billet, and my
heart is full of thoughts all tending towards you. I cannot tell you all
that I feel in every moment, yet how much I should like to share with
you the many pleasures that come one by one even in this monotonous life
of ours, as a broken thread drops its pearls.

I should like to be able to admire with you this lovely cloud, this
stretch of country which so fills us with reverence, to listen with you
to the poetry of the wind from beyond the mountain, as when we walked
together at Boulogne. But here a great many prosaic occupations prevent
me from speaking to you as I feel.

I sent you with my baggage my note-book from August 18 to October 20.[2]
These notes were made when we could easily get at our light bags, in the
calm of our trench-days, when our danger stopped our chattering, and I
could let my heart speak. I found a happiness more intense, wider and
fuller, to write to you about. That was a time of paradise for me. But I
don't like the billets, because the comfort and the security, relaxing
our minds, bring about a great deal of uproar which I don't like. You
know how much I have always needed quiet and solitude. Still, I have
excellent friends, and the officers are very kind.