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_28 January, 1895._
My dear Lucie:
This is one of the happy days of my sad existence, because I can come to
pass half an hour with you, talking to you and telling you of my life.
You know that I am permitted to write to you but twice a week. I have
received your two letters, of Friday and Saturday. Each time that they
bring me a letter from you a ray of joy pierces to my wounded heart.
What you told me in your letter of Saturday is perfectly true. Like you,
I have the absolute conviction that all will be discovered, but when?
You know that in the end everything is blunted, even the most heroic
courage. And, then, between the courage that makes a man confront
danger--no matter what danger it may be--and the courage that enables
him to bear, without fainting, the worst of outrages, scorn and shame,
there is a great difference. I have never lowered my head, believe it;
my conscience forbade that. I have a right to look all the world in the
face. But, alas! all the world cannot look into my soul, into my
conscience. The fact is there, brutal and terrible. That is why each
time that I receive one of your dear letters I have a ray of hope; I
hope at last to hear some good news. If the Léons have come back to
Paris, their impatience not letting them wait, only think how it is with
me. I know that you all suffer as I do, that you partake of my anguish
and my tortures, but you have your activity to distract you, a little,
from this awful sorrow; while I am here, impatient, shut up alone night
and day with my thoughts.
I ask myself even now how my brain has been strong enough to resist so
many and so oft-repeated blows; how is it that I have not gone mad.
It is certain, my darling, that it is only your profound love which can
make me still hold on to life. To have consecrated all my strength, all
my intelligence, to the service of my country, and then suddenly to be
accused of the greatest, the most monstrous, crime a soldier can
commit--condemned for it--that is enough to disgust one with life! When
my honor is given back to me--oh, may that day come soon!--then I will
consecrate myself entirely to you and to our dear children.
And then think of the terrible way I have still to traverse before I
shall arrive at the end of my journey--crossing the seas for sixty or
eighty days under conditions so appalling. I do not speak--you know
it--of the material conditions of the passage; you know that my body has
never worried me much; but the moral conditions! To be during all that
time before sailors, the officers of the navy--that is, before honest
and loyal soldiers--who will see in me a traitor, the most abject of
criminals! At the bare thought of it my heart shrinks.
I think that no innocent man in this world has ever endured the mental
torments that I have already borne, that I have still to bear. So you
can think that in each of your letters I search for that word of hope,
so long waited for, so ardently desired.
Write to me, each day, long letters. Give me news of all the members of
the family, since I do not hear from them and cannot write to them. Your
letters give me, as I have already said, my only moments of happiness.
You only, you alone, bind me to life.
Look backward I cannot. The tears blind me when I think of our lost
happiness. I can look forward only in the supreme hope that soon the day
will break, illumined with the light of truth.
Kiss them all for me; kiss our dear children. A thousand kisses for you.