Real autumn weather is here, but, for that matter, it has been more like autumn than summer since last spring. The fields are lovely to see on days when the sun shines. I drove the other day just for the pleasure of sitting in my perambulator, on the hillside, and looking over the slope of the wide wheat fields, where the women, in their cotton jackets and their wide hats, were reaping. The harvesting never looked so picturesque. I could pick out, in the distance, the tall figure of my Louise, with a sheaf on her head and a sickle in her hand, striding across the fields, and I thought how a painter would have loved the scene, with the long rays of the late September sunset illuminating the yellow stretch. Last Wednesday we had a little excitement here, because sixteen German prisoners, who were working on a farm at Vareddes, escaped--some of them disguised as women. I wasn't a bit alarmed, as it hardly seemed possible that they would venture near houses in this district, but Père was very nervous, and every time the dog barked he was out in the road to make sure that I was all right. Oddly enough, it happened on the very day when two hundred arrived at Meaux to work in the sugar refinery. The next day there was a regular battue, as the gendarmes beat up the fields and woods in search of the fugitives. If they caught them, they don't tell, but we have been ordered to harbor no strangers under a severe penalty. But that condition has really existed since the war broke out, as no one is even allowed to engage a workman whose papers have not been visé at the mairie. I have had to have a wood fire today--it is alarming, with winter ahead, and so little fuel, to have to begin heating up at the end of September--three weeks or a month earlier than usual. XXVIII November 25, 1916 It is raining,--a cold and steady downpour. I don't feel in the least like writing a letter. This is only to tell you that I have got enough anthracite coal to go to the end of February, and that the house is warm and cosy, and I am duly thankful to face this third war-winter free from fear of freezing. It cost thirty-two dollars a ton. How does that sound to you? I have planted my tulip bulbs, cleaned up the garden for winter and settled down to life inside my walls, with my courage in both hands, and the hope that next spring's offensive will not be a great disappointment. In the meantime I am sorry that Franz Josef did not live to see this war of his out and take his punishment. I used to be so sorry for him in the old days, when it seemed as if Fate showered disasters on the heads of the Hapsburgs. I wasted my pity. The blows killed everyone in the family but father. The way he stood it and never learned to be kind or wise proved how little he needed pity.