It is this that I tell you in all my letters; it is this that I repeated to you last evening; it is this that I now repeat to you more vehemently then ever. The more the physical forces decrease, the more ought the energies to increase, the will to press on. I can, then, dear Lucie, but wish for you and for me, for all of us, that this united effort may bring about its result. I embrace you with all the power of my love, and our dear and good children. Your devoted ALFRED. * * * * * _5 February, 1897._ Dear and good Lucie: It is always with the same poignant, profound emotion that I receive your dear letters. Your letters of December have just been given to me. To tell you of my sufferings--what good would it do? You must fully realize what they are, accumulated thus without one moment of truce or rest in which I might renew my strength and brace up my heart and my worn-out, disordered brain. I have told you that I have equal confidence in the efforts of one and all; that, on one hand, I have an absolute conviction that the appeal I again made has been heard, and that, knowing you all as I do, you will not fail in your duty. What I wish to add is this: We must not bring into this horrible affair either bitterness or acrimony against individuals. To-day I shall repeat it to you as on the first day, above all human passions is our country. Under the worst sufferings, under the most atrocious abuse and insult, when the human beast awakes ferocious, making reason vacillate under the torrents of blood that burn the eyes, the temples, the whole being, I have thought of death, I have longed for it, often I called to it with all my spirit; but my lips are ever hermetically sealed, because I want to die not only an innocent man, but a good and loyal Frenchman, who never for one single instant has forgotten his duty to his country. Then, as I told you, I think, in my last letters, precisely because the task is laudable; because your means, all your means, are limited by interests other than our own; finally because I may not be long able to resist a situation so atrocious, and when the only thing I ask of my country is the discovery of the truth, that I may see for my dear little ones the day when honor shall be given back to us--it is for all this, dear Lucie, that you must appeal to all the forces that a country, a government, has power over, to seek to put an end as soon as possible to this fearful martyrdom; for be assured my nervous and cerebral exhaustion is great, and it is more than time that I should hear at last a human word that is a kind word. Well, I hope for us all that all these efforts are soon to throw light upon this dark drama and that I am soon to learn something certain, positive; so that at last I may sleep, may rest a little. But whatever may become of me, I wish to repeat to you with all my soul, Courage and Faith!