all who can aid in bringing about the truth; for truly I doubt that human beings have ever suffered more than we are suffering. I ask myself each day how we have been able to keep alive.
I end this prattle with regret. This moment so short, so fugitive, when I come to chat to you, when I pretend to myself that I am talking with you, that I am telling you all that is in my heart. But alas! I feel too keenly that I eternally repeat myself; for there is only one thought in the bottom of my heart; there is only one cry in my soul: to know the truth of this frightful drama, to see the day when our honor shall be returned to us!
I embrace you as I love you, from the depths of my heart, as I embrace my dear and adored children.
Alfred.
5 October, 1896.
Dear and good Lucie:
I have just received you dear letters of August, as well as letters from all the family, and it is under the profound impression not only of all the sufferings that we all endure, but of the pain that I have caused you by my letter of the 6th of July, that I write to you.
Ah, dear Lucie, how weak the human being is, how he is at times cowardly and egotistical! When I wrote as I did, I was, as I think I told you, at that time a prey to fevers that burned me, body and brain—I whose spirit was already so beaten down, whose tortures were already so great. And then in the profound distress of all my
