I have seen with happiness that your health and the health of all resist this frightful condition of things, this horrible nightmare, in which we have lived so long. What a trial for you, my good darling, as horrible as it is undeserved—for you who deserve to be so happy! Yes, I have horrible moments, when the heart can bear no longer the blows which open the wound already so deep, when my brain gives way under the weight of thoughts so sad and so deceptive. When, after I have waited for my letters in an agony of anxiety, the mail arrives, and still I do not receive the announcement of the discovery of the truth, or of the author of that infamous and cowardly crime, oh, I have at first a feeling of deep, bitter disappointment. My heart is torn, is broken, under so many sufferings, so long and so undeserved!
I am a little like a sick man who lingers on his bed of torment, suffering anguish, but who lives because his duty demands it, and who keeps asking his doctor, "When will my tortures end?" And as the doctor answers, "Soon, soon," the sick man ends by asking himself, "But when will this 'soon' come?" and he longs to see it come.
It was a long time ago that you announced it to me . . . but be discouraged? Oh, that never! However terrible may be my sufferings, the desire for our honor is far above them!
Neither you, nor any one, will ever have the right to one moment of fatigue, one second of weakness, as long as the goal has not been reached—the absolute honor of our name. As for me, when I feel that I am falling under the united weight of all our suffering, when I feel that my reason is leaving me, then I think of you, of
