As for our dear children, kiss them with all your heart for me. The few words which Pierre adds to each letter give me great pleasure. It is for you and for them that I have found the strength to bear all, and I long to live to see the day when honor shall be returned to us. I wish for this with all my strength, with all my power, with all the energy of a man who places honor above all else. May this wish soon be realized! You must do all in your power to accomplish it. I embrace you again, with all my heart. Your devoted ALFRED. Kiss your dear parents and all our family for me. * * * * * _27 September, 1895._ My dear Lucie: For nearly a year I have struggled with my conscience against the most inexplicable fatality that can pursue a man. There are times when I am so harassed, so disgusted, that I am like the soldier who, worn out by long-continued fatigue, lies down in a trench, longing to have done with life. My soul awakes, the sense of my duty puts me on my feet again, all my being then nerves itself for a supreme effort, for I wish to find myself again with you and with my children on the day when my honor shall be returned to me. But it is truly an agony that is renewed with every day, a punishment as horrible as it is unmerited. If I tell you all this, if at times I have allowed you to catch a glimpse of how horrible is my life here, how this lot of infamy, whose effects continue day by day to harrow my being, to revolt my heart, it is not that I would complain; it is to tell you again that if I have lived, if I continue to live, it is because I desire my honor, yours, that of our children. May your spirit, your energy, rise equal to such tragic conditions, for this must come to an end. This is why I told you in my letter of the 7th of September that if when you receive these letters the mystery is not made entirely clear, it is for you, for you personally, to go to the public authorities, so that light may at last be thrown on this tragic story. You have the right to present yourself everywhere, with your head erect, for you have come not to beg for mercy, not to beg for favors, not even for moral convictions, however legitimate they may be. You have come to demand the search for the discovery of the wretches who have committed the infamous and cowardly crime. The Government has all the means by which this may be done. Letters can do nothing, dear Lucie. It is you yourself who must act. What you have to say will receive from your lips a power, a force, that paper and writing cannot give. Then, my dear Lucie, strong in your conscience, in your quality of wife and mother, go on your way, tireless until justice is done to us. And this justice, which you must demand energetically, resolutely, with all your soul, is that light may be thrown, full and unshadowed, upon this machination of which we are the wretched victims.