And when I come in this way to chat with you for a few moments--oh, such fleeting instants!--in regard to that thought which never leaves me night or day, it seems to me that I live for one short moment with you, that I feel that your heart is groaning with mine, and then I long to press you in my arms, to take your two hands in mine, and to say to you again, “Yes, all this is atrocious; but never should a moment of discouragement enter into your soul any more than it ever enters into mine. Just as I am a Frenchman and a father, so must you be a Frenchwoman and a mother. The name that our dear children bear must be washed free of this horrible stain; there must not remain one single Frenchman who has one doubt of our honor.” That is our object, always the same. But, alas! if one can be a stoic in the presence of death, it is difficult to be one before this anguish of every day, confronted by this harrowing thought, the question, when is this horrible nightmare to end, in which we have lived so long--if it can be called living to suffer without respite. I have lived so long in the deluding expectation of a better day to come, wrestling, not against the weaknesses of the flesh--they leave me indifferent; it may be because I am haunted by other preoccupations--but against the weaknesses of the brain, against the weaknesses of the heart. And then in these moments of horrible distress, of almost insupportable pain, so much greater because it is compressed, contained--I can give absolutely no vent to it--I long to cry to you across the space, “Ah, dear Lucie, hurry to those who direct the affairs of our country, to those whose mission is to defend us, that they may bring to you their active, ardent help, with all the means at their disposal, so that at last light may be thrown upon this sad tragedy, that we may know the truth, the whole truth, the only thing that we ask for.” This, then, in a few words, is what I wish, what I have wished always, and I cannot believe that they will not give it to you. It is the co-operation of all the forces of which the government can dispose, to bring about the discovery of the truth; to cause justice to be rendered to a soldier who suffers a martyrdom that is shared by his dear ones; to put an end as soon as possible to a situation as atrocious as it is intolerable--a situation that no creature with a human heart, a human brain, could support indefinitely. Therefore, I can only hope, for us all, that this union of efforts, of good will, may bring about its result, and repeat to you always unchangingly, Courage and Faith! And now I have already stopped talking with you, and it is a tearing of my heart to end my letter. But of what can I speak to you? Of our lives, of our children? Does not the future of a whole family depend upon this one thought that reigns in our hearts? Could there, as you have said so truly, be any remedy for our ills other than full and entire rehabilitation?