2–8 April 1855

Yesterday the battery arrived. I am living in Sevastopol. Our losses already amount to five thousand, but we are holding out not merely well, but so that our defence should clearly prove to the enemy the impossibility of ever taking Sevastopol. Wrote two pages of Sevastopol in the evening.

Morning. All these days I have been so fully occupied with what has been happening, and partly with my duties, that excepting one ill-arranged page of Youth I have not had time to write anything. Since the 4th the bombardment has lessened, but it still continues. The day before yesterday I passed the night in the Fourth Bastion. There is a steamer that occasionally fires at the town. Yesterday a shell fell near a boy and girl who were playing horses in the street. They embraced one another and fell down together. The girl is the daughter of a sailor. Every day she goes to his quarters under the fire of shells and bombs. My cold is so terrible that I cannot take to anything.