Written from "Madrid / Hotel Sevilla / rue Alcala."
She and her husband are in Spain, because he doesn't want to have anything to do with military service. Two months earlier she sent her will to [Jos] Hessel, because she thought that Rosenberg and Monsieur [Albert] Borel were in the country. She was living in the Cap Ferret in her brother-in-law's house, but even though he is Swiss, the Germans wanted to sack it. She read in the newspaper about the death of the poet Charles Péguy and of someone named Muller. She says that the Cubist painters are in good health, but everyone is at war. She had begun some paintings at the Cap Ferret, but the declaration of war distressed her too much to continue. She speaks of life in Madrid and of the painters whose works she sees at the Prado. She mentions Goya, El Greco, and Velazquez--"closer to our mentality than that boring Mona Lisa." She loves paintings of kings and queens most of all, all grey and black, and a painting of a woman in a magnificent dress, with flowers in her hair, that one would think was painted by [Henri] Rousseau. She wouldn't be surprised if the Germans continued to buy French paintings, even though there are serious money problems in Germany. They have bought works by Cezanne and Renoir and understand that their own painters are no good. All of Germany seems to be Francophiles, although Germans don't seem to like her paintings very much. Someone bought a painting of hers from Flechtheim, which surprised her.