'I will stay in this farmhouse while the gas course lasts [...] and get the old peasant in the evenings to recite more "[Fables of] La Fontaine" to me, in the Béthune dialect, and walk out to see the neighbouring inns and shrines, and read -- Bless me, Kapp [a fellow officer and satirical artist, recently sent away to the Press Bureau] has gone away with my "John Clare"! He has the book yet for all I know [...].