Your devoted
Alfred.
Kisses to your dear parents, to all.
5 June, 1896.
My dear Lucie:
I have not yet received your good letters of April, so I have been forced to content myself by re-reading, as I do each day, often many times a day, your good and affectionate letters of March, and from them I have drawn a little calm. I cannot, however, let the English mail leave without coming to gossip a little with you, without drawing near to you.
Oh, I can see you very well in thought from here, my dear and good Lucie, for you do not leave me for a single moment. I know the moments of your crises, when, after some one has given you hope, that hope is again disappointed; when, after a moment of relaxation, of peace, you fall back into a violent despair, asking yourself with anguish when we shall wake from this abominable nightmare in which we have lived so long. And then you write to me, and you find in your splendid soul, in your loving and devoted heart, the strength to hide from me the atrocious tortures, the appalling anguish through which you are passing.
And then I, who feel, who divine all that—I, whose heart is crushed and wounded in its purest sentiments, in its tenderest love, with the blood boiling in my veins, because I feel all the torture heaped upon us, upon our two families—with my very reason in revolt I go and put into my letters the cries of anguish and of impatience that are in my soul; then I suffer through a long month thinking of the emotion you will feel, and I am still more unhappy.
Instead of bringing you, you who are wounded with me in your honor as a wife and a mother, the moral support, the steadfast, energetic, ardent support which you need in the noble mission you must fulfill, I come, at times, to lament, to occupy you with my little sufferings, my petty tortures, with I know not what, to augment your poignant grief. Forgive my weakness—human weakness, alas! all too natural. Words, indeed, are powerless to depict a martyrdom like ours. But it can have but one termination—the discovery of the guilty wretches, absolute, complete rehabilitation, all the honor of our name, the name of our dear children.