learn that at last our terrible suffering is to have an end.
I embrace you as I love you, as I embrace our dear children. Your devoted
Alfred.
A thousand kisses to your dear parents, to all our friends.
7 February, 1898.
Dear Lucie:
I have just received your dear letters of December, and my heart is breaking; it is rent by the consciousness of so much unmerited suffering. I have told you that the thought of you, of the children, always raises me up, quivering with anguish, with a supreme determination, from the thought of all that we hold most precious in the world—our honor, that of our children—to utter this cry of appeal, that grows more and more thrilling—the cry of a man who asks nothing but justice for himself and those he loves, and who has the right to ask it.
For the last three months, in fever and in delirium, suffering martyrdom night and day for you, for our children, I have addressed appeal on appeal to the Chief of the State, to the Government, to those who caused me to be condemned, to the end that I may obtain justice after all my torment, an end to our terrible martyrdom; and I have not been answered.
To-day I am reiterating my former appeals to the Chief of the State and to the Government, with still more energy, if that could be; for you must be no longer subjected to such a martyrdom; our children must not
