December 17, 1914.

Our new gaoler has introduced a fresh method of taking the roll-call. We have all to line up in two ranks in the sticky mud of the ditches, and to wait there while we are counted. This ridiculous enumeration interferes with the digestion of our poor midday meal, and serves more than any other petty formality to remind us that we are prisoners. Just now, when the gloomy ceremony was finished, I went to see the Feldwebel.

He is a wealthy horse-dealer from Ratisbon, cunning, short, with a receding forehead, fresh-coloured, laughing eyes, well padded with fat, a typical German Jew. Recently emerged from poverty, moderately patriotic, secretly thinking that people are very stupid to get their skins perforated for the Vaterland and other fine words, he takes for his own motto in all circumstances that a living dog is better than a dead lion. He has managed to arrange that his part in the campaign shall be a safe one, played where he will be close to his faithful spouse and to his business, far from the deadly bullets. He is quite a good fellow, with no desire to play the persecutor; but since his chief dread is to be caught in a dereliction of duty and sent to the front, he is extremely strict. Twice a day, at two and at seven, we exchange language lessons. This does not merely secure me some new words of German, but also from time to time I am given a handful of nuts and two or three apples.

I hasten off to fetch my parcel. I imagine that it contains something to eat—chocolate, sausage—and I am hungry. The Feldwebel giggles like a child. He takes the key of No. 72, the terrible casemate which is as damp as a drain; and, flanked by d’Arnoult and myself, he reaches the “parcels office” at the end of the gloomy passage. I walk confidently, for I have already, by clandestine methods, scrutinized your consignment, and weighed it in my hand. It was compact, as heavy as one could wish, and felt like a ten-pound box of Menier chocolate. I was cocksure. Here we are; we light the lantern. I lay the packet on the table. Keenly expectant, I cut open the oilcloth wrapping. Books! Montaigne, Voltaire. An indulgent glance from the Feldwebel at this consignment. I take my leave. Brissot awaits me at the turn of the stairs. “Well?”—“Books, old chap.”—“Capital! The smallest grain of millet would have suited you better!”

Not even a letter, a little smuggled letter! How punctilious you are! Do you know that your letter of November 2nd did not come to hand till yesterday, having taken forty-four days to travel from Paris to Fort Orff?