Yesterday we were in a pretty Meuse village, all the more charming in contrast with the surrounding ruins.

I was able to have a shirt washed, and while it dried I talked to the excellent woman who braves death every day to maintain her hearth.  She has three sons, all three soldiers, and the news she has of them is already old.  One of them passed within a few kilometres of her:  his mother knew it and was not able to see him.  Another of these Frenchwomen keeps the house of her son-in-law who has six children. . . .

For you, duty lies in acceptance of all and, at the same time, in the most perfect confidence in eternal justice.

Do not dwell upon the personality of those who pass away and of those who are left; such things are weighed only with the scales of men.  We must gauge in ourselves the enormous value of what is better and greater than humanity.

Dear mother, absolute confidence.  In what?  We both already know.

October 30, 10 o’clock.

Up till now I have possessed the wisdom that renounces all, but now I hope for a wisdom that accepts all, turning towards what may be to come.  What matter if the trap opens beneath the steps of the runner.  True, he does not attain his end, but is he wiser who remains motionless under the pretext that he might fall?

November 1, All Saints’, 8 o’clock.

Last night I received your card of 24-25th.  While you were looking at that moon, clouded from us, you were very wrong to feel yourself so helpless; how much reason had you to hope!  At that very moment I was being protected by Providence in a way that rebukes all pride.

The next day we had the most lovely dawn over the deeply coloured autumn woods in this country where I made my sketches of three years ago; but just here the landscape becomes accentuated and enlarged and acquires a pathetic majesty.  How can I tell you the grandeur of the horizon!  We are remaining in this magnificent place, and this is All Saints’ Day!

At the moment, I write to you in the silvery light of a sun rising over the valley mists; we are conscious of the sleeping country for forty kilometres around, and battle hardly disturbs the religious gravity of the scene.

Do love my proposed picture!  It makes a bond with my true career.  If it is vouchsafed to me to return, the form of the picture may change, but its essence is contained in the sketch.

Mid-day.—­Splendid All Saints’ Day profaned by violence.

Glory of the day. . . .

November 2, All Souls’.

Splendid feast of sun and of joy in the glorious beauty of a Meusian landscape.  Hope confines itself in the heart, not daring to insult the grief of those for whom this day is perhaps the first day of bereavement.

Dear beloved mother, twenty-eight years ago you were in a state of mourning and hope to-day, the agony is as full of hope as then.  It is at a different age that these new trials occur, but a whole life of submission prepares the way to supreme wisdom.