This morning the sun is shining! How pleasant not to have one's head bowed and one's back bent before the storm! Several days of incessant rain have transformed the trenches into streams of mud. We sink over our ankles in a slimy, yellowish cream. Third night in the first line. _Monday, 7th December._ We are relieved at five in the afternoon. We run through the branches in all the greater hurry because we are going to our quarters. Every dozen steps we slip or stumble. I managed to reach the Achains' before the rest to order dinner. On the threshold I have to answer the invariable question: "No one missing?" I reply gaily-- "Of course not, but we are all very dirty and tired, and as hungry as wolves." After removing our trappings and leaning our rifles in a corner, whilst awaiting the arrival of our friends, we relate the paltry happenings of the last four days: the dark nights and heavy rainfall, the skirmishes, the bombardment, etc. "And what of you here, has much damage been caused?" The fact is that our village is being shelled almost daily, but the inhabitants scarcely pay attention to it. They have acquired somewhat of our mentality as soldiers, just as we have adopted something of their peasant nature. They know that in war one must be astonished at nothing. No, this time no great damage has been done. "A 150 shell exploded in Madame B.'s garden, over there on the right, and _père_ Untel just missed being killed in his loft by a spent ball." We remark gravely-- "All the same, things look bad." We shake our heads just as old fogies do when the crops are likely to prove a failure. One old dame asks anxiously-- "At all events, you'll not let them come back here?" At this moment our comrades burst in, Jacquard at the head, haversack on back, pipe in mouth, muddy and all muffled up. His big face, with its shaggy beard, beams with goodwill. He brandishes his big rifle in his small arms and thunders forth-- "Let them come back! No indeed, my good woman; they'd have to pass over our bodies first!" We approve of what he says, and succeed in calming him down. The mistress, an optimist, declares in her country accent-- "Shall I tell you what I think?" "Certainly." "Well, then, some fine day they will clear off without any one suspecting it." "_Mon Dieu_, for my part, I shouldn't object if----" Our existence is now as well regulated as that of any Government official: four days in the trenches, four days at Bucy, four days in the trenches, and so on. How glad we are to get back to the house and our old habits! Yes, we keep to these habits, though they are far different from those we followed in the bygone days of peace. It may be that we do so because we know them to be so fragile and uncertain, like ourselves, and at the mercy of the least of the hazards of war. After dinner, then, one game of cards, two, three. Some other game as an occasional novelty, though we always return to the noble game of manilla.