What can I add to express again my profound affection for you, for our children, for your dear parents, for all our dear brothers and sisters, for all who suffer through this long and frightful martyrdom? It is useless to tell you in detail of myself and all my petty matters. I do it sometimes in spite of myself, for the heart has irresistible revolts. Bitterness rises to the lips when one sees everything that makes life noble and beautiful misunderstood. Certainly, if it were a question only of my own person, long ago would I have sought in the peace of the grave forgetfulness of what I have seen, of what I have heard, of what I continue to see every day. I have continued to live in order to sustain you all with my indomitable will; for it was no longer a question of my life, it was a question of my honor, of the honor of us all, of the lives of our children. I have endured everything without bending, without lowering my head; I repress every day my feelings of revolt, calling always for the truth, without weariness and without pride. I wish, nevertheless, for both of us, my poor friend, and for all, that our efforts may soon end, and that the day of justice may dawn at last for all who have been so long awaiting it. Every time that I write to you, I find it almost impossible to drop my pen, not because of what I have to say to you, but because thus I part with you again for so long a time, living only in your thought, in the thought of the children, in the thought of you all. Nevertheless, I conclude by embracing you as well as our dear children, your dear parents, and all our dear brothers and sisters, pressing you in my arms with all my strength, and repeating to you, with an energy that nothing can shake and as long as I shall retain a breath of life: Courage! courage and determination!
“In addition, I read to you some short extracts from the last letter, received at Paris, and dated December 25, 1897.
My dear Lucie:
More than ever I have tragic movements, in which my brain weakens. That is why I desire to write to you, not to speak to you of myself, but to give you again the counsel that I believe I owe to you. All through this month I have continued my numerous and warm appeals for you and for our children. I desire that this frightful martyrdom may come to an end, that we may at last emerge from the terrible nightmare in which we have so long been living. But what I cannot doubt, and what I have no right to doubt, is that all possible aid will be extended to you that this work of justice and reparation may be accomplished. In short, my darling, what I would like to say to you, in a supreme effort in which I wholly put aside my own person, is that you should maintain your right energetically, for it is frightful to see so many human beings suffer thus, and to think of our unhappy children growing up. But with this should be mingled no irritating question, no question of persons. I wish I could press you in my arms with all the strength of my love, and I beg you to embrace long and tenderly for me my dear and adored children, my dear parents, all my dear brothers and sisters, with a thousand kisses more.
“And beneath are these tragic words, which I must read to you, for they add to the horror:
Read in accordance with orders, the Chief of the Penitentiary Administration.
“It should have been added, ‘copied in accordance with orders,’ for of the authenticity of these letters you can have no doubt, since they are copied in the hand of an employee of the administration. The handwriting of Dreyfus himself does not reach his wife.
“I wish I could read you also, as I intended, a letter from M. Gabriel Monod, for it is an admirable psychological document, a testimonial of the respect in which the writer holds the Dreyfus family, an expert study of handwritings. But I must not detain you.
“It is absolutely necessary, however, that I should read to you an article from ‘Le Jour,’ our most implacable opponent, and an article from the pen of M. Paul de Cassagnac, who this morning in his paper does not exactly shower compliments upon us. ‘Le Jour’ and ‘L’Autorité’ were the instigators of the campaign that is now going on. The article from ‘Le Jour’ that I shall read to you appeared September 11, 1896, over the signature of Adolphe Possien.
Since the Dreyfus question has come up again, and since the discussion now begun can end only in a series of inquiries, we desire to contribute our share to the search for the causes that brought about the arrest and conviction of the prisoner of Devil’s Island. It is known that the doors were closed during the trial, and that during the preliminary incarceration nothing of what the prisoner did or said transpired. Furthermore, little was known of the motives that determined General Mercier to order the arrest of Dreyfus. It is known that the ex-captain was accused of having been in relations with a neighboring power, and of having delivered to it documents concerning the national defence. But what was the nature of these documents? No official communication has made that known; so that at the present hour it seems to be rather generally believed that it was a matter of the general mobilization time-table. Now, that is false, just as it is false in the last degree that the ex-captain was questioned by General de Boisdeffre or by General Gonse.