at your courage and your heroism. I loved you before. To-day I kneel before you, for you are a sublime woman. But do not allow yourself to be beaten down, I supplicate you. Think of our children, who have need of you.
It may be that in my desire to be worthy of you, to reach the heights on which you stand, I shall be able to hold out to the end. It is not physical suffering that I fear—that has never been strong enough to break me down; its blows glance off—but the torture of soul, the knowledge that my name is dragged in the mire, the name of a man who is innocent, the name of a man of honor. Cry it aloud, my darling; cry to every one that I am innocent—the victim of terrible fatality.
Shall we ever succeed in discovering the real guilty one? Let us hope it; to lose that hope would be to despair of everything.
I hope to see you soon, and that is my consolation. All the day, all the night, my thoughts fly to you—to you all. I think of the happiness we enjoyed, and I ask myself, even now, by what inexplicable fatality that happiness was broken.
It is the most awful tragedy that it has ever been given me to read, and instead of reading it, I must live it out, alas! Finally, be careful of your own self, my darling. You need all your health, all your physical vigor, if you are to bring to a successful end the task you have so nobly undertaken.
I embrace you and our poor darlings, of whom I dare not think.
A thousand kisses.
Alfred.
