Kiss them all for me; kiss our dear children. A thousand kisses for you.
Alfred.
Thursday, 31 January, 1895.
My dear Lucie:
At last the happy day is here! I can write to you. I count them, alas! my happy days.
I have not, indeed, received any letters from you since the one they gave me last Sunday. What terrible suffering! Until now I have had each day a moment of happiness in receiving your letter. It was an echo from you all—an echo of the sympathy of you all, that warmed my poor frozen heart. I used to read and re-read your letters. I absorbed each word. Little by little the written words were transformed and given a voice—it seemed to me that I could hear you speaking; that you were by my side. Oh, the delicious music that whispered to my soul! Now, for four days nothing but my dreary sorrow, the appalling solitude.
Truly I ask myself how I live. Night and day my sole companion is my brain. I have nothing to do except to weep over our misfortunes.
Last night when I thought of all my past life, of all my labor, of all that I have done in order to acquire an honorable position, ... then when I compared that with my present lot, sobs seized my throat; it seemed that my heart was being torn asunder; and, so that my guards should not hear me—I was so ashamed of my weakness—I stifled my sobs with the coverings of my bed.
Oh, it is too cruel!