_November 17, in the morning._

DEAR MOTHER,-- . . . I write to you in the happiness of the dawn over my
dear village. The night, which began with rain, has brought us again a
pure and glorious sky. I see once more my distant horizons, my peaked
hills, the harmonious lines of my valleys. From this height where I
stand who would guess that agricultural and peaceful village to be in
reality nothing but a heap of ruins, in which not a house is spared, and
in which no human being can survive the hell of artillery!

As I write, the sun falls upon the belfry which I see framed in the
still sombre tree close beside me, while far away, beneath the last
hills, the last swelling of the ground, the plain begins to reveal its
precious detail in the rosy and golden atmosphere.


_November 17, 11 o'clock._

The splendid weather is my great consolation. I live rather like an
invalid sent to some magnificent country, whom the treatment compels to
unpleasant and fatiguing occupations. Between Leysin and the trench
where I am at present there has been only uncertainty. Nothing new has
happened to our company since October 13.

This is a strange kind of war. It is like that between neighbours on bad
terms. Consider that some of the trenches are separated from the enemy
by hardly 100 metres, and that the combatants fling projectiles across
with their hands: you see that these neighbours make use of violent
methods.