I embrace you with all my heart, as I love you; also our dear children, and I am waiting now until I shall have the happiness of receiving your dear letters, always so impatiently expected.
Your devoted
Alfred.
Kisses to all.
May 7, 1896.
My dear Lucie:
A few moments before I received your dear letters I was subjected to an outrage—only a mean, shabby trick—but such things hurt one whose heart has been already so deeply wounded. I have not, alas! the soul of a martyr. To tell you that there are not times when I would be glad to die and end this atrocious life would be to lie. Do not see in this any trace of discouragement. The goal is immutable, it must be attained, and it shall be. But I am a human being as well, undergoing the most appalling of martyrdoms for a man of heart and a sense of honor, bearing it only for you and for our children.
Each time they turn the knife in the wound my heart cries with grief. I wept after this last outrage . . . but enough of that. As I was saying, I have just received your dear letters of March, the letters of all the family, and with all the joy of reading the words you have written, I have always as well that sense of bitter disappointment, which you can well realize, that comes from not yet seeing the end of our tortures. How you must suffer, Lucie! how you all must suffer when you cannot hasten the moment our honor will be restored to us, when the wretches who committed the infamous crime
