weakness which comes ordinarily with spring only serves here to make
burdens heavier.

Dear mother, how glad I am to feel the sympathy of those who are far
away. Ah, what sweetness there is!

I am delighted by the Reviews; in an admirable article on Louis Veuillot
I noticed this phrase: 'O my God, take away my despair and leave my
grief!' Yes, we must not misunderstand the fruitful lesson taught by
grief, and if I return from this war it will most certainly be with a
soul formed and enriched.

I also read with pleasure the lectures on Molière, and in him, as
elsewhere, I have viewed again the solitude in which the highest souls
wander. But I owe it to my old sentimental wounds never to suffer again
through the acts of others. My dearly loved mother, I will write to you
better to-morrow.


_February 4._

Last night, on coming back to the barn, drunkenness, quarrels, cries,
songs and yells. Such is life!. . . But when morning came and the
wakening from sleep still brought me memories of this, I got up before
the time, and found outside a friendly moon, and the great night taking
wing, and a dawn which had pity on me. The blessed spring day gilds
everything and scatters its promises and hopes.

Dear, I was reflecting on Tolstoi's title, _War and Peace_. I used to
think that he wanted to express the antithesis of these two states, but