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_Thursday, 31 January, 1895._
My dear Lucie:
At last the happy day is here! I can write to you. I count them, alas!
my happy days.
I have not, indeed, received any letters from you since the one they
gave me last Sunday. What terrible suffering! Until now I have had each
day a moment of happiness in receiving your letter. It was an echo from
you all--an echo of the sympathy of you all, that warmed my poor frozen
heart. I used to read and re-read your letters. I absorbed each word.
Little by little the written words were transformed and given a
voice--it seemed to me that I could hear you speaking; that you were by
my side. Oh, the delicious music that whispered to my soul! Now, for
four days nothing but my dreary sorrow, the appalling solitude.
Truly I ask myself how I live. Night and day my sole companion is my
brain. I have nothing to do except to weep over our misfortunes.
Last night when I thought of all my past life, of all my labor, of all
that I have done in order to acquire an honorable position, ... then
when I compared that with my present lot, sobs seized my throat; it
seemed that my heart was being torn asunder; and, so that my guards
should not hear me--I was so ashamed of my weakness--I stifled my sobs
with the coverings of my bed.
Oh, it is too cruel!
How I prove to-day by my own experience that it is sometimes harder to
live than to die!
To die would be to pass a moment of suffering; but it would be to forget
all my woes, all my tortures.
On the other hand, to carry each day the weight of suffering, to feel
the heart bleed, and to endure this torment in every nerve, to feel
every fibre of my being tremble, to suffer the undying martyrdom of the
heart, this is terrible.
But I have not the right to die. We have none of us that right. We shall
have it only after the truth shall have been brought to light; only when
my honor shall have been given back to me. Until then we must live. I
bend every effort to this task, to live. I try to annihilate in me all
my intellectual part, all that is sensible of suffering, so that I may
live, like a beast, preoccupied with the satisfying of its material
needs.
When shall this martyrdom come to an end? When will men recognize the
truth?
How are our poor darlings? When I think of them it is a torrent of
tears. And you, I hope that you are well. You must take care of your
health, my darling. The children first of all, and then the mission
which you have to fulfill, impose upon you duties which you cannot
neglect.
Forgive the disconnected and wandering style of my writing. I no longer
know how to write; the words will not come to me, my brain is shattered.
There is but one fixed idea in my mind--the hope of some day knowing the
truth, of seeing my innocence recognized and proclaimed. That is what I
mutter night and day, in my dreams as in my waking hours.
When shall I be able to embrace you and recover in your deep love the
strength I need to carry me to the end of my calvary?
Embrace every one for me.
Kisses for the darlings.