In order that the crews may not lose their skill in firing the guns, which sleep in a profound slumber during this disconcerting war, from time to time we practise firing at floating targets. Not shooting with a regular charge, for our guns make so much noise that an hour later all the telegraphs of the world would announce “the great naval battle in the Strait of Otranto,” but what is called in the navy reduced firing. With small charges and small shells we fire upon little canvas targets which float on the water like children’s toys driven by the breeze. This makes proportionately no more noise than a pea-shooter firing peas, but the entire organism of the ship--engines, system of direction and of firing, telemetry and rules of firing--functions as it would in battle. When we pick up the target the crew examines the canvas and the framework, counts the holes and the scratches, criticizes this parody of battle. A pitiful solace for our desire for action! One thought consoles us: the Austrians at Pola, the Germans at Kiel, the English in the bases where they wait, are tiring themselves with the same vanities as ourselves, with reduced firing and the pretences of battle. Yes, this naval war is indeed disconcerting. These were my thoughts during the watch the other night, when everything about me was so fair. A full moon with soft features, but with a contour as sharp as that of a new medal, rode in a sky as pure as the face of a child. The stars were swollen with joy. Vague lightning illuminated first one part of the sky and then another, like vagrant smiles of the night, without arrière-pensée. The sea, drowsy with warmth, had a calm and fragrant breath, and it seemed as if our prow in cutting it was profaning a divine slumber. It was one of those moments when the most unhappy man feels love flood his heart, and as my eyes fell only on eternal things, my spirit absorbed all their blessing. The cruiser was patrolling the middle of the Strait of Otranto; on its left a comrade kept guard towards Fano and Corfu; on its right the _Gambetta_ in the Italian sector received from time to time the flashes from the lighthouse. During the afternoon we had come quite near the _Gambetta_; our boats had exchanged the parcels, the mail, and orders, and it is now the _Waldeck-Rousseau_ who will occupy the Italian sector after we separate. At the last moment some new order has given our place to the _Gambetta_ and kept us in the central rectangle. It is of no particular importance, and our turn to be neighbors with the lighthouse will come to-morrow.