Try to obtain permission to see me as soon as possible.
I embrace you a thousand times.
Alfred.
Good kisses to the poor darlings.
7 o’clock in the evening.
My God, how sorrowful is my soul! What in all my life have I done that I should be thus punished? The wretch who has committed the crime of betraying me, the wretch through whom I am lost, deserves, if there is a God, a terrible chastisement. He deserves to be punished through all he loves. In the name of my poor children I curse him.
Monday, 5 P. M., 7 January, 1895.
My Darling:
I have borne for your sake, my adored one, for the name which my dear children bear, the most agonizing, the most appalling, of calvaries for a heart that is pure and honorable. I ask myself how I am yet alive. That which sustained me is, above all else, the hope that I shall soon be united to you down there. Then, though innocent as I am, but sustained as I shall be by your profound love, I shall have the patience to await in exile the vindication of my name. There, too, I shall work, I shall be busy. I shall impose silence upon my heart and my brain by force of physical fatigue. But in my prison it would be difficult to live, for my thought always brings me fatally back to my condition.