To-day our dear little Pierre is five years old. All my heart, all my thoughts go out to him, to you, to our dear children. All my being quivers with sorrow. What can I add, my dear Lucie? My affection for you, for our children, you know it. It has kept me alive; it has made me endure what otherwise I should never have accepted; it gives me the force still to endure all. You say that we are approaching the end of our sufferings. I wish it with all my strength; for never have human beings suffered like this. I wrote you a long letter, ten days ago, by the French mail. I embrace you, as I love you, with all my strength, and also our children. Your devoted ALFRED. I received some days ago the reviews and books that you sent in November. Their tardy arrival may be traced to the fact that they were sent by freight--that is to say, by sailing vessels. I find a little solace in them. But my brain is so shaken, so fatigued, by all these appalling shocks that I cannot fix my mind upon anything. The other parcels you have sent will reach me some day. Embrace your dear parents, and all of our family for me. I wrote to them by the French mail. * * * * * _26 April, 1896._ My dear Lucie: In the long and atrocious days of which all these months are made, I have read and re-read your dear letters of February. My heart has bled with the anguish to which you have been subjected during these long months, and of which each word in your letters bears the trace. I could feel how you restrained the shivers of your being, how you held back the overflowing volume of your grief, and in an effort of your loving and devoted heart you found the strength to cry again to me, “Oh, I am strong!” Yes, be strong, for strength is needed. One of these nights I dreamed of you, of our children, of our torture, compared with which death would be sweet, and in my agony I cried out in my sleep. My suffering is at times so strong that I would tear my skin from my flesh, to forget in physical pain this too violent torture of soul. I arise in the morning with the dread of the long hours of the day, alone, for so long, with the horrors of my brain; I lie down at night with the fear of the sleepless hours. You ask me to speak to you at length of myself, of my health. You must realize that after the tortures to which I have been subjected, supporting the atrocious life of the present, a life that never leaves me a moment of rest, day or night, my health cannot be brilliant. My body is broken, my nerves are sick, my brain is crushed, say, simply, that I still hold myself erect in the absolute sense of the word only because I resolved to, so as to see with you and our children the day when honor shall be returned to us. You ask yourself sometimes, in your hours of calmness, why we have been thus tried.... I ask it of myself at every instant, and I find no answer.