Happy is it for me that I have the deep affection with which both our families surround me--that above everything I have your love, which pays me for all my sufferings. Forgive me if sometimes I complain; do not think that my soul is less valiant because a groan escapes my lips; these cries relieve my heart; and to whom could I cry if not to you, my dear wife? A thousand kisses for you and for the little ones. ALFRED. * * * * * _Wednesday, 5 o’clock._ My Darling: I wish to write these few words more, so that you may find them to-morrow morning when you awake. Our conversation, even through the bars of the prison, has done me good. My limbs trembled under me when I went down to met you, but I gathered all my strength, so that I should not fall from my emotion. Even now my hand is still trembling; our interview has violently shaken me. If I did not insist that you should stay still longer it was because I was at the end of my strength. I had to hide myself, so that I might weep a little; do not believe because I weep that my soul is less brave or less strong; but my body is somewhat weakened by three months of the prison, without a breath of the outer air. I must have had a robust constitution to have been able to resist all these tortures. What has done me the most good is that I felt that you were so brave, so valiant, so full of love for me. Let us, my dear wife, continue to command the respect of the world by our attitude and by our courage. As for me, you must have felt that I am decided to face everything. I want my honor, and I shall have it. No obstacle shall stop me. Kiss the babies for me. A thousand kisses. ALFRED. The parlor is to be occupied to-morrow, Thursday, from 1 until 4 o’clock. So you must come either in the morning between 10 and 11 o’clock, or in the afternoon at 4 o’clock. This takes place only Thursdays and Sundays. * * * * * IN THE PRISON OF LA SANTE. _5 January, 1895._ I will not tell you what I have suffered to-day. Your grief is great enough already. I will not augment it. In promising you to live, in promising you to resist until my name is rehabilitated, I have made the greatest sacrifice that a man of deep feeling of heart, an upright man, from whom his honor has been taken, can make. My God, let not my physical strength abandon me! My spirit is unshaken; a conscience that has nothing with which to reproach me upholds me, but I am coming to the end of patience and of my physical strength. After having consecrated all my life to honor, never having deserved reproach, to be here, to have borne the most wounding affront that can be inflicted upon a soldier! Oh, my darling, do everything in the world to find the guilty one; do not relax your efforts for one instant. That is my only hope in the terrible misfortune which pursues me.