Even as I write, a strange serenity possesses me.  Something—­extraordinary comfort.  Be it a human quality, be it a revelation from on high.  All around me men are asleep.

February 14 (5th day in the front line).

All is movement about us; we too are afoot.  Even as the inevitable takes shape, peace revisits my heart at last.  My beloved country is defiled by these detestable preparations of battle; the silence is rent by the preliminary gun-fire; man succeeds for a time in cancelling all the beauty of the world.  But I think it will even yet find a place of refuge.  For twenty-four hours now I have been my own self.

Dear mother, I was wrong to think so much of my ‘tower of ivory.’  What we too often take for a tower of ivory is nothing more than an old cheese where a hermit rat has made his house.

Rather, may a better spirit move me to gratitude for the salutary shocks that tossed me out of too pleasant a place of peace; let us be thankful for the dispensation which, during certain hours—­hours far apart but never to be forgotten—­made a man of me.

No, no, I will not mourn over my dead youth.  It led me by steep and devious ways to the tablelands where the mists that hung over intelligence are no more.

February 16.

In these latter days I have passed through certain hours, made decisive hours for me by the visibility of great and universal problems.  We have now been for five days in the front line, with exceedingly hard work, hampered by the terrible mud.  As our days have followed each other, and as my own struggle against the frightful sadness of my soul continued, the military situation was growing more tense, and the preparation for action was pushing on.  Then came the announcement of the order of attack.  There was only a day left—­perhaps two days.  It was then I wrote you two letters, I think those of the 13th and 14th; and really, as I was writing, I had within my heart such a plenitude of conviction, such a sweetness of feeling, as give incontrovertible assurance of the reality of the beautiful and the good.  The bombardment of our position was violent; but nothing that man can do is able to stifle or silence what Nature has to say to the human soul.

One night, between the 14th and the 15th, we were placed in trenches that were raked by machine-guns.  Our men were so exhausted that they were obliged to give place to another battalion.  We were waiting in the wet and the cold of night when suddenly the notice came that we were relieved.  We could not tell why.  But we are here again in this village, where the men deluge their poor hearts with wine.  I am in the midst of them.

Dear mother, if there is one thing absolute in human feeling, it is pain.  I had lived hitherto in the contemplation of the interesting relations of different emotions, losing sight of the price, the intrinsic value, of life itself.  But now I know what is essential life.  It is that which clears the soul’s way to the Absolute.  But I suffered less in that time of waiting than I am suffering now from certain companionships.