notwithstanding that, we can enrich our souls in a magnificent way.


_October 30._

I write to you in a marvellous landscape of grey autumn lashed by the
wind. But for me the wind has always been without sadness, because it
brings to me the spirit of the country beyond the hill. . . .

The horrible war does not succeed in tearing us from our intellectual
habitation. In spite of moments of overwhelming noise, one more or less
recovers oneself. The ordinary course of our present existence gives us
a sensibility like that of a raw wound, aware of the least breath.
Perhaps after this spoliation of our moral skin a new surface will be
formed, and those who return will be for the time brutally insensitive.
Never mind: this condition of crisis for the soul cannot remain without
profit.

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.