delicate darks which our dear landscape-painter felt so nobly.

Such is the peace of this morning. Who would believe that one has but to
turn one's head, and there is nothing but conflagration and ruin!. . .


_November 7, 8 A.M._

I have just had your card of the 30th announcing the sending-off of a
packet. How kind this is! how much thought is given to us! All this
sweetness is appreciated to the full.

Yesterday, a delicious November day. This morning, too much fog for the
enjoyment of nature. But yesterday afternoon!

Delicate, refined weather, in which everything is etched as it were on a
misty mirror. The bare shrubs, near our post, have been visited by a
flock of green birds, with white-bordered wings; the cocks have black
heads with a white spot. How can I tell you what it was to hear the
solitary sound of their flight in this stillness!--That is one good
thing about war: there can be only a certain amount of evil in the
world; now, all of this being used by man against man, beasts at any
rate are so much the better off--at least the beasts of the wood, our
customary victims.

If you could only see the confidence of the little forest animals, such
as the field-mice! The other day, from our leafy shelter I watched the
movements of these little beasts. They were as pretty as a Japanese
print, with the inside of their ears rosy like a shell. And then another
time we watched the migration of the cranes: it is a moving thing to