I am putting the house to rights. It has been woefully neglected. The heavy curtains and the couch and chairs in my study are full of moth. Just to make a change, I have shifted the furniture and converted the dining-room into my study. I am not sure that it looks better, but it is certainly an improvement to get a different view from my window. I come to hate my former view of the smug house opposite with its many windows. They used to depress me and make me feel sick at heart. Many was the time I could see myself falling past them and past the flat, disgusting walls. How strangely man is constituted! I couldn’t help reflecting on this as I helped the porter move the furniture. Birds migrate to the south when they feel the winter coming on, while man begins to find a new attraction for his little box of a home, and sets about making it as comfortable as he can for the stormy weather. The moving would have amused and distracted me, had not the face of my darling Lidotchka, that is ever before my eyes, made me recall former years when she used to help, in her own little way, and sent a pain through my heart. Lidotchka is gone, never to return. + 

Many other things are gone, too, never to return. Desolation has penetrated even to the heart of our little home. I was obliged to give up all thoughts of repapering. The cost of living has risen to such a degree as to make a poor man look with apprehension at the future. Bread and fuel.⁠ ⁠… But why should I fill my diary with the prosaic details of everyday life? Dear, dear, the war is proving a monster, indeed! + 

The Germans continue to advance from Warsaw and are getting nearer and nearer to us. No one speaks about it, and all wait anxiously for new developments. We look askance at each other for any chance of some fresh news, but what fresh news can there be? Even the Germans, it seems, know nothing, and no one in the whole world knows or understands.⁠ ⁠… The world is turned upside down. + 