26 March, 1896.
My dear Lucie:
I received the 12th of this month your good letters of January, so impatiently expected every month, also all the letters from the family.
I have seen with happiness that your health and the health of all resist this frightful condition of things, this horrible nightmare, in which we have lived so long. What a trial for you, my good darling, as horrible as it is undeserved—for you who deserve to be so happy! Yes, I have horrible moments, when the heart can bear no longer the blows which open the wound already so deep, when my brain gives way under the weight of thoughts so sad and so deceptive. When, after I have waited for my letters in an agony of anxiety, the mail arrives, and still I do not receive the announcement of the discovery of the truth, or of the author of that infamous and cowardly crime, oh, I have at first a feeling of deep, bitter disappointment. My heart is torn, is broken, under so many sufferings, so long and so undeserved!
I am a little like a sick man who lingers on his bed of torment, suffering anguish, but who lives because his duty demands it, and who keeps asking his doctor, “When will my tortures end?” And as the doctor answers, “Soon, soon,” the sick man ends by asking himself, “But when will this ‘soon’ come?” and he longs to see it come.
It was a long time ago that you announced it to me ... but be discouraged? Oh, that never! However terrible may be my sufferings, the desire for our honor is far above them!
Neither you, nor any one, will ever have the right to one moment of fatigue, one second of weakness, as long as the goal has not been reached—the absolute honor of our name. As for me, when I feel that I am falling under the united weight of all our suffering, when I feel that my reason is leaving me, then I think of you, of our dear children, of the undeserved dishonor cast upon our name, and I recover my balance by a violent effort of my whole being, and I cry to myself, “No, you shall not bend before the tempest! Your heart may be in bits, your brain may be crushed, but you shall not succumb until you have seen the day when honor shall be given back to your dear children!”
This is why, dear Lucie, I come to cry to you always, to you, as to all, “Courage!” and more than courage—for will to accomplish!... Oh, silently, very silently—for words do not help—but boldly, audaciously to march straight onward to the end—the entire truth, the light upon this awful drama, in one word, all the honor of our name! Means? They must all be employed, of whatever nature they may be—anything that the mind can suggest to obtain the solution of this enigma.
The object is everything; that alone is immutable. I wish our children to enter upon life with heads proudly erect. I wish to animate you with my supreme desire. I wish to see you succeed, and it will be full time, I swear to you!