. . . My consolations fail me in these days, on account of the weather.
This horrible mess lets me see nothing whatever. I close with an ardent
appeal to our love, and in the certainty of a justice higher than our
own. . . .

Dear mother, as to sending things, I am really in need of nothing.
Penury now is of another kind, but courage, always! Yet is it even sure
that moral effort bears any fruit?


_January 13, morning_ (in the trench).

I hope that when you think of me you will have in mind all those who
have left everything behind: their family, their surroundings, their
whole social environment; all those of whom their nearest and dearest
think only in the past, saying, 'We had once a brother, who, many years
ago, withdrew from this world, we know nothing of his fate.' Then I,
feeling 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