Be calm, collected, but gather all your strength, surround yourself with all the advice that can help you to pursue and to attain the object, and let us hope, for your sake, that the time may not be too long in coming. Embrace your parents, our brothers and sisters, and all your family for me.
I embrace you as I love you, more passionately than I ever have done before—with all the strength of my affection, and kiss for me our dear and adored children.
Your devoted
Alfred.
5 o’clock in the morning.
Before I send this letter I must come once more to embrace you with all my soul, with all my strength; to repeat to you that your conscience, your duty, our children, ought to be for you irresistible levers too strong for any human grief to bend.
September, 1896.
Dear and good Lucie: