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 Péguy 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 while we are in torment. I saw in the _Cri
de Paris_, which drifted as far as here, a list of concert programmes.
What a contrast! However, mother dear, the essential thing is to have
known beauty in moments of grace.

The weather is frightful, but one can feel the coming of spring. At a
time like this nothing can speak of individual hope, only of great
general certainties.


_January 19._

We have been since yesterday in our second line positions; we came to
them in marvellous snow and frost. A furious sky, with charming rosy
colour in it, floated over the visionary forest in the snow; the trees,
limpid blue low down, brown and fretted above, the earth white.

I have received two parcels; the _Chanson de Roland_ gives me infinite
pleasure--particularly the Introduction, treating of the national epic
and of the Mahabharata which, it seems, tells of the fight between the
spirits of good and evil.

I am happy in your lovely letters. As for the sufferings which you