So everything is all right then. Porchon approaches the bed and caresses the eiderdown.
"Ah! old friend, but that was a narrow escape," he says affectionately. "You shall wrap us up snugly shortly." Then raising his voice, he addresses me: "Come along, it is time to mess. Do not forget that I bought some pork yesterday evening from that old man back in the valley. There are also some apple fritters, and still one more of Presle's famous fowls."
Saturday, October 3rd.
Letters at last! Forty letters at once! And the postman tells me there are still others to follow! I plunge into the mass. I read voraciously, until I am a being intoxicated. I take them from the heap, just as they come to hand, slit the envelope open with my finger, and absorb the contents of the whole letter at once. How short a time it takes, after all, to read forty letters!
Then I re-read them slowly, line by line, as one sips an exquisite liqueur of whose bouquet one's palate never tires. My letters no longer swamp me; I select now, guided by a sure instinct.
And of all those letters, I preserve a few only—those each separate word of which bears a message of hope and encouragement for me. They are the more intimate, hopeful, brighter ones; they are the letters for which I have looked so long in vain. Having read and re-read them, I place them where, at any moment, in any place, they will be available. Meanwhile, because of them and through them, I have become more confident of myself….
Since the dawn, we have been in a steep-sided ravine, whose fresh green is most refreshing to the eyes. The guns are firing irregularly. A German battery is shelling some position out of sight; the shells fly over us at a great height, singing queerly and accompanied by the usual rustling of a heavy object flying through the air.
The older and seasoned soldiers laugh constantly while they banter and twit some new recruits who have just rejoined the colours, and who, each time a shell sails past, search the sky with anxious eyes, seeking to follow its course.
"Don't let them worry you, my boy! They are only rubbish!"
"They never explode, those big shells, as you will see for yourself. At least, that's what we have been told."