strength, as I embrace also our dear children. Now I am waiting for your good letters of July.
Your devoted
Alfred.
3 September, 1896.
Dear Lucie:
They brought me, just now, the mail for July. I found in it only one poor, little letter from you, that of the 14th of July, although you ought to have written oftener and more at length; but no matter.
What a cry of suffering escapes from all your letters and echoes in my own! Yes, dear Lucie, never have human beings suffered as have you, as have I, and every one of us. The sweat starts from my forehead when I think of it. I have lived only by straining every nerve, by the most powerful effort of the will, by gripping, compressing all my being in a supreme struggle; but emotions break us down; they make every fibre of the being quiver. My hands are wrung with grief for you, for our children, for us all; an immense cry rises to my throat and stifles me. Ah, why am I not alone in the world! What happiness it would be could I lie down in my grave, to think no more, to see no more, to suffer no more! But the moment of weakness, of the derangement of all my being, of awful anguish, has passed, and now I come to tell you, dear Lucie, that above all deaths—for what agony do not I know, as well that of the soul as that of the body, of the brain?—there is honor; that this honor, which is our right, must be restored to us . . . only, human strength has its limits for us all.
So when you receive this letter, if the situation is not at last shown in its proper light, act as I already told
