I have just at this moment received your letters. Words, my good darling, are powerless to express what poignant emotions the sight of your dear writing awakes in my heart; and, indeed, it is these sentiments of powerful affection that this emotion awakens in me that give me the strength to wait until the supreme day when the truth shall be made clear concerning this sad and terrible drama. Your letters breathe such a sentiment of confidence that they have brought serenity to my heart, that is suffering so much for you, for our dear children. You tell me, poor darling, not to think, not to try to understand. Oh, try to understand! I have never done that; it is impossible for me. But how can I stop my thoughts? All that I can do is, as I have told you, to try to wait for the supreme day of truth. During the last months I wrote you long letters, in which I poured out my over-burdened heart. What would you? For three years I have seen myself the toy of events to which I am a stranger, having never deviated from the absolute rule of conduct that I had imposed upon myself, that my conscience as a loyal soldier devoted to his country had imposed upon me. Even in spite of yourself the bitterness mounts from the heart to the lips; anger sometimes takes you by the throat and you cry out in pain. Formerly I swore never to speak of myself, to close my eyes to everything, because for me, as for you, for us all, there can be but one supreme consolation--that of truth, of unshrouded light. But while my too long sufferings, the appalling situation, the climate, which by its own power alone makes the brain burn--while all this combined has not made me forget a single one of my duties, it has ended by leaving me in a state of cerebral and nervous erethismus that is terrible. I understand thoroughly, too, my good darling, that you cannot give me details. In affairs like this, where grave interests are at stake, silence is necessary, obligatory. I chatter on to you, though I have nothing to tell you; but all this does me good, it rests my heart and relaxes the tension of my nerves. Truly, my heart often is shrivelled with poignant grief when I think of you, of our children; and then I ask myself what I can have committed upon this earth that those whom I love the most, those for whom I would give my blood, drop by drop, should be tried by such awful agony. But even when the too full cup overflows, it is from the dear thought of you, from the thought of the children--the thought that makes all my being vibrate and tremble, that exalts it to its greatest heights--from this thought that I draw the power to rise from the depths of despair, to send out the thrilling cry of a man who has begged for so long for himself, for those he loves, only for justice and truth--nothing but truth. I have summed up my resolution clearly, and I know that that determination is your own, that of all of you, and that nothing has ever been able to overcome it.