[A newspaper clipping is pasted on the page between the entries of September 28th and October 17th. The following is the text, translated from French, from the clipping.]

Shocking news from the front: The French line on the Aisne’s south bank was broken on the evening of the 28th as German forces crossed the river and took the French trenches. Survivors of the 93rd Infantry Regiment reported a startling event that morning, which is believed to be to blame for the attack. In the early hours of the morning a French soldier built a bonfire and self-immolated in front of the trenches before being dragged from the fire by a fellow soldier. It is consensus opinion among the survivors that the Germans had shown no signs of movement until that morning. Otto Duval, the soldier in question, was held in a field hospital for over two weeks. Last night, surrounded by family, he succumbed to his injuries. Among his companymen it is believed the fire was meant as a signal to the German forces. Command has given no official position on the matter.

My name is Charles Duval, and John Ashcroft will pay.

My brother was no traitor, of this I have no doubt. The only thing liable to be betrayed by Otto was the confidence of a full cookie jar - even that could last only a few minutes before he confessed to mom out of guilt. Unthinkable. No force of heaven or Earth could have convinced little Otto to consciously sabotage an army who was helping him protect his family. The idea is ludicrous. It’s an insult. He couldn’t have done it, and now I’ve found the proof in this diary. John Ashcroft is the one to blame. His end will be as painful for him as his life has been for all of us.

I’ll start by saying this: I’ve read through every entry, even the ones before my brother’s, and I believe every word of it. Ottie, dear boy, hello. I know you’re still here and I await the moment you find it best to write in this book once again. Adam, Otto, thank you for guiding him through, in order to repay that debt I’d like to volunteer myself as next in line. Utilize this as you see fit, but I will sacrifice myself to destroy this diary if need be. I ask only for the time necessary to avenge my brother before we begin.

I want to tell you a story. My hope is to communicate a feeling I believe we all share, as to hold us closer together as a unit. There is part of my soul I did not realize was there until it was gone, and now I cannot remember how it felt. I cannot replace what I have lost. This, I believe, is what connects us. I’d like to tell you a story about the long period of my life in which that fragment of myself still remained, that fragment I’d like to call innocence, or the sublime, or appreciation of the new, but whose true character has been too skillfully exorcised from my being to be properly named.

There is a bookstore in Paris I visited when I was a younger man - about 19, I believe - which still to this very day haunts my daydreams. As recently as this morning I found myself in some menial task, which today was the unraveling of a loose thread of yarn from a cloth, when my focus drifted to my mind’s eye, where I stand between two shelves ten feet tall, both layered with thousands of books. If I squint my mind I can almost remember the order of them, for virtue of having been there so many times, but the overarching emotion of the place is a sense of something being missing, as if the memory isn’t complete. I can smell the musk of the books, most already owned, read, and thoroughly used, and I can feel the grain of the wood, the smooth lacquer they had used on the shelving, the way the spaces for the E and S names were bulging full while W and X and Z fell loose and limp against their walls. I can recall it all as if I were still there, like no time had passed at all, yet I get the feeling now I could never truly go back. Heraclitus of Ephesus wrote no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man. I could have told you a month ago that the river had changed its banks, the books rearranged, bought and replaced years ago, but it was not until I watched my brother lower into the ground that I realized the man crouched there in the rain, trying to open the coffin to embrace his baby brother again was not the man who once roamed the shelves of that bookstore, searching for anything at all. Perhaps today I will look through the scientific section, he would think, there may be something new to catch my imagination. I do hope they’ve brought in new Jules Verne copies, I’ve already got the ones they had last time. God, who was this man? How I long to understand him, to feel the emotion again.

In this process of describing my longing, I’ve captured the feeling again, like lightning in a bottle. A miracle has occurred. I hope to hear your stories too, my dear Ottos, so that you may feel the same. For now I must sleep. There is hope yet. There is always hope.