As for you, I embrace you with all the strength of my heart.
Alfred.
It is useless to send me anything in the way either of linen or of food. I received some preserves from Cayenne yesterday and I also asked for some linen which I need. They have given me the Revue des Deux Mondes, the Revue de Paris, and the Revue Rose. Continue to send them to me; you may also send a few light novels.
15 June, 1895, Saturday evening.
My dear Lucie:
I have already written to you, some days ago, on the receipt of your letters of the beginning of March, and my intention had been to send you, by this mail, only a few words of deep affection, for what can I tell you that I have not already told you again and again in all my letters? But in reading your dear letters, in re-reading them every day, I have felt each time I read them, for a moment, a lightening of my load of sorrow. It seemed to me that you were all near me and that I felt your hearts beating in sympathy with mine.
Sure that you have this same feeling, I yield to the impulse of my heart, which longs to do everything to bring some relief to your horrible sorrow. It is contrary to reason; I know it, for reason tells me to be calm and patient, that the light of truth will shine out, that it is impossible that it should be otherwise in the age in which we live; but yet when I write to you it is my heart that speaks, and then in spite of myself everything within me revolts against the appalling accusation so opposed to every feeling of our hearts, for to us honor is everything. I feel within me such a fever of combat, such power of energy to rend the impenetrable mantle that weighs me down, that still envelops this whole affair, that I am always longing to instill them into your souls, although I realize that the sentiments of you all are the same as my own. It is a useless outbreak, and I know it; but you know equally well that all my feelings are violent and deep. My heart bleeds for all that it holds most dear; it bleeds for you and it bleeds for our dear children, and that is to reiterate to you, my dear Lucie, that it is the longing I have to see the name you bear, that our dear children bear, once more as it has always been, pure, without a stain—it is this longing that gives me the strength to overcome all.
I live absorbed in myself. I neither see nor hear what passes around me. My brain alone still lives and all my thoughts are concentrated on you, on our dear children, on waiting until my honor is given back to me.
Then still hold to your splendid courage, my dear Lucie. I hope that we shall soon find the happiness which we used to enjoy and which we shall enjoy even more after this appalling trial, the most awful that a man can bear.