none of this brutality has succeeded in defiling. 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