To crown all, after these frightful hours, they told us that the enemy
was training his machine-guns upon us, and that we must attack him.
However, we were relieved; the explosion was violent.

As for my still unwritten verse, '_Soleil si pale_,' etc., it relates to
the 11th, 12th, and 13th of October, and, generally, to the time of the
battle in the woods, which lasted for our regiment from September 22nd
to October 13th. What struck me so much was to see the sun rise upon the
victims.

Since then I have written nothing, but for a prayer which I sent you
five or six days ago. I composed it while I was on duty on the road.


_November 25, in the morning._

. . . Yesterday, in the course of that march, I lived in a picture by my
beloved primitives. Coming out of the wood, as we went down a long road,
we had close by us a large farm-house, plumed by a group of bare trees
beside a frozen pool.

Then, in the under-perspective so cleverly used by my dear painters with
their air of simplicity, a road, unwinding itself, with its slopes and
hills, bound in by shrubs, and some solitary trees: all this precise,
fine, etched, and yet softened. A little bridge spanning a stream, a man
on horseback passing close to the little bridge, carefully silhouetted,
and then a little carriage: delicate balance of values, discreet, yet
well maintained--all this in front of a horizon of noble woods. A kind
of grey weather which has replaced the enchantment, so modern in