Embrace the little ones tenderly for me.
Will you please deposit two hundred francs with the clerk of the prison?
* * * * *
_25 December, 1894._
My Darling:
I cannot date this letter, for I do not even know what day it is. Is it
Tuesday? Is it Wednesday? I do not know. It is always night. As sleep
flies my eyelids I arise to write to you.
Sometimes it seems to me that all this has not happened; that I have
never left you.
In my hallucinations all that has happened to us seems to me a bad
nightmare; but the awakening is terrible.
I cannot believe in anything but your love and the affection of all of
ours.
We must continually search for the guilty one. All means are good.
Chance alone will not suffice.
Perhaps I shall succeed in surmounting the horrible terror with which
the infamous sentence I am going to bear inspires me. To be an honorable
man, to be innocent, and to see my honor torn from me and trampled under
foot--oh, it is fearful! it is the worst of sufferings! worse than
death!
Oh, if I go to the end it will be for your sake, my dear, adored one,
for you are the only thread that binds me to life!
How we loved each other!
To-day more than ever before I know what place you hold in my heart.
But, above all, be careful of your own self; think of your health. _You
must, at all costs_, for the sake of my children, who have need of you.
Then search in Paris as you did down there for the guilty one. We must
try everything; we must leave nothing undone. There are people surely,
there must be people, who know the name of the guilty man.