Add to this the war and the mines and the submarines! Fourgues is quite right--no man knows what he has in him till he gets a wife, a real one, and leaves her. What a profession ours is! Life seems so beautiful--one launches into it like a ship on the sea. But when, to support a wife you adore, you have to earn a living at the price of never being with her, it’s the worst of all. Yesterday, at the station, she went and I was left on the platform. She had implored me to be prudent, to save myself if the _Pamir_ should go down, to forget my self-respect and that I am an officer, and to think of her. I swore! But you know what professional honour is. I knew I was lying. I knew that if the catastrophe came, the mariner would conquer the married man. What a terrible last day! We love each other so much that we did not dare speak: the sea was between us. I suffered the tortures of the damned. Was I right to marry her during the war. Later, there would have been no torpedoes or submarines--we could have accepted our separation with more patience. But now! Now I am afraid for my skin! If it were only my skin! But she! My body will go, but all the rest stays with her. And if I go down, what will be my last thoughts? I shall see her at La Rochelle, waiting for me and wringing her hands, and she will never know whether I am dead or not. It is atrocious. Don’t marry before peace. I swore to her that the submarines were all rot. But you and I know well that they are there--and everywhere--and that we’ve nothing against them on the _Pamir_. The people on land are sending us to the slaughter. Have they no mothers, no wives or daughters or sisters--those who refuse us guns and wireless? They sing the glory of France and they choke Frenchmen like that fellow in the Bible who offered up his son. The sea and the torpedoes make me afraid, my poor chap. I am afraid--afraid. MARSEILLES, _November 2, 1916_. Forgive me, my dear old man, for my letter of the day before yesterday. I was going through a crisis. I hope you will never have to experience anything similar. But one sees what life means when one has adopted a second self for life and desires her happiness. It’s all over now. The _Pamir_ is taking on stuff for the Army of the East and for the Fleet which is at Salonica. So shop claims me and calms me. My wife writes delightful letters. She is not as anxious now as when she was here. I’m getting along, old man. I went through a rotten gale, but it’s over now. You must have laughed at me. Didn’t you?