You tell me to accept my lot courageously. Alas, sometimes it fails me. However, I shall try to be resigned and I hope to see you again in spite of everything. If that should not happen, say to yourself, my dear boy, when you close your eyes, that you have all the love and all the sweetest kisses of your mother, who would like to fly to you.
The sisters are worthy of their mothers. Here is a letter written by two young girls who live in Lorraine, near Nancy. Plutarch never wrote anything more beautiful:
Moyen, 4 September, 1914.
My dear Edouard:
I have heard that Charles and Lucien died on the twenty-eighth of August. Eugène is badly wounded. As for Louis and Jean, they are dead also.
Rose has gone away.
Mother weeps, but she says that you are brave and wishes that you may avenge them.
I hope that your officers will not refuse you that. Jean won the Legion of Honor; follow in his footsteps.
They have taken everything from us. Of the eleven who went to war, eight are dead. My dear Edouard, do your duty; we ask only that.
God gave you life; he has the right to take it away from you. Mother says that.