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.
But you know what you have to say, and you must say it squarely,
proudly.
Yes, my dear Lucie, that was what I thought from the first. I should,
without making any noise about it, without any go-between except the
person introducing me, have taken a child by each hand, and I should
have gone to demand justice everywhere, without resting until the guilty
wretches should have been unmasked. These means are “heroic,” but they
are the best means, for they come from the heart, and they appeal to the
heart, to that sense of justice that is innate in each one of us, unless
he is carried away by passion. They proceed from the strength given by
innocence, from a duty to be fulfilled; and they know no obstacle. They
are means worthy of a woman who asks only for justice for her husband,
for her children.
It must not be said that in our century a wretch can with impunity crush
the lives of two families.
Courage, then, dear Lucie, and act with resolution. Kisses to all. I
embrace you with all my strength, and our dear, adored children.