Now, it is not in your power to abridge my martyrdom, our martyrdom. The Government alone possesses means of investigation powerful enough, decisive enough, to do it if it does not wish to see a Frenchman—who asks from his country nothing but justice, the full light, the whole truth of the sad tragedy, who has but one thing more to ask of life—that he may yet see for his dear little ones the day when their honor is restored to them—succumb under the weight of so crushing a fate for an abominable crime that he did not commit.
I am hoping, then, that the Government will lend you its co-operation. Whatever may become of me, I can only repeat to you with all the strength of my soul to have confidence, to be always brave and strong, and embrace you with all my strength, as I love you, as I embrace also our dear, our adored children.
Your devoted
Alfred.
6 January, 1897.
My dear Lucie:
Again I feel the need of coming to talk with you, of letting my pen run on a little. The unstable equilibrium that with great difficulty I maintain through a whole month of unheard-of sufferings is broken when I receive your dear letters, always so impatiently awaited; they awake in me a world of sensations, of feelings, that I had kept under during thirty long days, and I ask myself vainly what is the meaning of life when so many human beings are called to suffer thus. And then I have suffered so much in the last months that have just passed, that it is only when I am near you that I can warm my freezing heart. I know, too, my darling, as well as you, that I repeat myself always since the very first day of this sad tragedy; for my thought is like your own, like the thought of you all, like the will that must sustain and inspire us.
And when I come in this way to chat with you for a few moments—oh, such fleeting instants!—in regard to that thought which never leaves me night or day, it seems to me that I live for one short moment with you, that I feel that your heart is groaning with mine, and then I long to press you in my arms, to take your two hands in mine, and to say to you again, “Yes, all this is atrocious; but never should a moment of discouragement enter into your soul any more than it ever enters into mine. Just as I am a Frenchman and a father, so must you be a Frenchwoman and a mother. The name that our dear children bear must be washed free of this horrible stain; there must not remain one single Frenchman who has one doubt of our honor.” That is our object, always the same. But, alas! if one can be a stoic in the presence of death, it is difficult to be one before this anguish of every day, confronted by this harrowing thought, the question, when is this horrible nightmare to end, in which we have lived so long—if it can be called living to suffer without respite.
I have lived so long in the deluding expectation of a better day to come, wrestling, not against the weaknesses of the flesh—they leave me indifferent; it may be because I am haunted by other preoccupations—but against the weaknesses of the brain, against the weaknesses of the heart. And then in these moments of horrible distress, of almost insupportable pain, so much greater because it is compressed, contained—I can give absolutely no vent to it—I long to cry to you across the space, “Ah, dear Lucie, hurry to those who direct the affairs of our country, to those whose mission is to defend us, that they may bring to you their active, ardent help, with all the means at their disposal, so that at last light may be thrown upon this sad tragedy, that we may know the truth, the whole truth, the only thing that we ask for.”