My dear Lucie:
In the long and atrocious days of which all these months are made, I have read and re-read your dear letters of February. My heart has bled with the anguish to which you have been subjected during these long months, and of which each word in your letters bears the trace. I could feel how you restrained the shivers of your being, how you held back the overflowing volume of your grief, and in an effort of your loving and devoted heart you found the strength to cry again to me, “Oh, I am strong!”
Yes, be strong, for strength is needed.
One of these nights I dreamed of you, of our children, of our torture, compared with which death would be sweet, and in my agony I cried out in my sleep.
My suffering is at times so strong that I would tear my skin from my flesh, to forget in physical pain this too violent torture of soul. I arise in the morning with the dread of the long hours of the day, alone, for so long, with the horrors of my brain; I lie down at night with the fear of the sleepless hours. You ask me to speak to you at length of myself, of my health. You must realize that after the tortures to which I have been subjected, supporting the atrocious life of the present, a life that never leaves me a moment of rest, day or night, my health cannot be brilliant. My body is broken, my nerves are sick, my brain is crushed, say, simply, that I still hold myself erect in the absolute sense of the word only because I resolved to, so as to see with you and our children the day when honor shall be returned to us.
You ask yourself sometimes, in your hours of calmness, why we have been thus tried.... I ask it of myself at every instant, and I find no answer.
We deceived each other mutually, dear Lucie, by alternately recommending each other to be calm and to be patient. Our love tries in vain to hide from each other the thoughts that agitate our hearts.
My anguish when I write to you, the heart quivering with pain and fever, tells me too clearly what you feel when you write to me.
No, let us tell each other simply that if we still live with torn and panting hearts, with our souls shivering with anguish, it is because there is a supreme object to be attained, cost what it may—the full honor of our name, that of our children—and that right speedily, for sensitive people cannot live in a situation whose every moment is a torture.
Very often I have wished to speak to you at length of our children—I cannot. A dull, bitter anger floods my heart at the thought of these dear little creatures, struck through their father, who is innocent of a crime so abominable.... My throat contracts, my sobs choke me, my hands are wrung with grief at not being able to do anything for them, for you ... to struggle to keep from dying in such a situation, and for so long.