If I write to you often, and at such length, it is because there is something that I would express better than I do express it. It is that, strong in our consciences, we must lift ourselves high above all this, without moaning, without complaining, like sensitive, honorable people, who are suffering a martyrdom to which they may succumb. We must simply do our duty. If my part of this duty is to stand fast as long as I can, your part of it, the part of you all, is to demand that the light may shine in upon this lugubrious drama, to appeal to 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 being, when I had need of a friendly hand, of a gentle face, delirious from the fever and from pain, when I did not receive your letter, I had to cry out to you in my misery, for I could cry to no one else. Afterward I regained possession of myself, and I became again what I had been, what I shall remain to my last breath. As I told you in my letter of the day before yesterday, strong in our consciences, we must raise ourselves above everything; but with that firm, inflexible determination which will make my innocence shine out before the eyes of all France. Our name must come out of this horrible adventure what it was when they made us enter into it. Our children must enter upon life with heads proudly raised.