If only the end were nearing, the end of the long miseries of winter in the lousy, stinking, and chattering casemate! If an end were nearing to the sterile cackle, the disquisitions on strategy, the disputes, and the lamentations, to all that a discontented crowd exhales, through the empty hours, in the way of physical boredom and of melancholy! Oh the gnawing ache of these two months in an ant-hill encompassed by snow, filth, and bitter winds! Two months of purgatory. I know now that to live among men, nothing but men, day by day and night by night, in intimate contact, without activity, without solitude, without the company of women (that other solitude), is to live in purgatory. Take men who have nothing in common but the flag. They differ in traditions, education, and temperament; their habits of life are fixed. They are in the full vigour of manhood. They are strong and spirited. They are familiar with violence and struggle. Throw these soldiers pell-mell into a cellar, where they hunger and are cut off from news. Subject them to meddlesome regulations. Compel them, in this wretchedness, to live always in close proximity, and far from everything which they have hitherto known as life. Doubtless they will have their good hours. At times, when their minds are filled with thoughts of those they love and of their motherland, their words and their silences will be no less pure and sweet than is a long summer twilight. Or when some newspaper, concealed in a parcel from France, has brought them tidings of victory and wafted to them all the hope of their free brothers, they will experience a sublime unison of joy. But at other times.… No, I wish to forget. After all, the heroes of the great epic are but men. Why should we expect of them, during months and months, a patience and a self-command of which many men in good society, men esteemed well-bred, are incapable when a caller stays too long? * * * * * Everything has changed since Baron von Stengel’s departure. The new commandant, M. Schwappach, of the department of streams and forests, possesses all the virtues of the German bureaucrat. He is active, precise, orderly, meticulous. He has also the infatuation of his caste, for he believes that the world gravitates round it. He admires and fears his chiefs, and he applies to the very letter every _Befehl_ from headquarters. Everything is now forbidden. Daily the _Feldwebel_ reads the orders to the sentries: the slopes are forbidden; without challenge, they must fire upon any one who is seen there. * * * * *