O dear mother, if God allows me the joy of returning, what youth will this extraordinary time have brought back to me!  As I wrote to my friend P——­, I lead the life of a child in the midst of people so simple that even my rudimentary existence is complicated in comparison with my surroundings.

Mother dear, the length of this war tries our power of passive will, but I feel that everything is coming out as I was able to foresee.  I think that these long spells of inactivity will give repose to the intellectual machine.  If I ever have the happiness of once more making use of mine, it is sure to take a little time to get moving again, but with what new vigour!  My last work was one of pure thought, and my ambition, which all things justify, is to give a more plastic form to my thought as it develops.

Sunday, December 27, 9 o’clock (5th day in the first line).

It appears that the terrible position, courageously held by us on October 14th, and immediately lost by our successors, has been retaken, and 200 metres more, but at the price of a hundred casualties.

Dear mother, want of sleep robs me of all intelligence.  True, one needs little of that for the general run of existence here, but I should have liked to speak to you.  The only consolation is that our love needs no expression.

Very little to tell you.  I was quite stupefied by the day’s work yesterday, spent entirely in darkness.  From my place I had only a glimpse of a pretty tree against the sky.

To-day, in the charming early morning I saw a beautiful and extremely brilliant star.  I had gone to fetch some coal and water, and on the way back, when daylight had already come, that extraordinary star still persisted.  My corporal, who, like me, was dodging from bush to bush back to our house, said: 

’Do you know what that star is?  It is the sign for the enemy’s patrol to rally.’

It was true, and at first I felt outraged at this profanation of the sky, and then (apart from the ingenuity of the thing) I told myself that this star meant, for those poor creatures on the other side, that they could take the direction of safety.  I felt less angry about it then.  The sign had given me so much joy as a star that I decided to stick to my first impression.

December 30.

Your Christmas letter came last night.  Perhaps in this very hour when I am writing to you, mine of the same day is reaching you.  At that time, in spite of the risk, I was enjoying all the beauty, but to-day I confess it is poisoned for me by what we hear of the last slaughter.

On the 26th we were made to remain on duty, in positions occupied only at night as a rule.  Our purely defensive position was lucky that day, for we were exposed only to slight artillery fire; but on our right a regiment of our division, in one of the terrible emplacements of October 14th, received an awful punishment, of which the inconclusive result cost several hundred lives.  Here in our great village, where our kind hostess knew, as we did, the victims, all is sadness.