My best kisses to your parents, to all our friends. I need not write to
them; all our hearts beat in unison.
* * * * *
_5 March, 1897._
My dear and good Lucie:
I wrote you a few lines the 20th of February while I was waiting for
your dear letters, which have not yet reached me. I have just learned
that, in consequence of an accident to the machinery, the steamer has
not yet arrived at Guiana.
As I told you in my last letter, we know too well, each one of us, the
horrible acuteness of our sufferings, to give us any reason to speak of
it.
But I would, if it were possible, impregnate this cold and commonplace
paper with all that my heart contains for you, for our children. At
every instant of the day and of the night you tell yourself that my
thought is with them; and that when my heart can bear no more, when the
too-full cup overflows, it is in murmuring these three names that are so
dear to me, it is in telling myself always, that for their sakes I must
live to see the day when honor shall be given back to the name of my
children, that I find, at last, the strength to overcome the atrocious
nausea, that I find the strength to live.
As to the counsel that I would give you, it never changes.
I have told you everything at length in my numerous letters of January,
and it may be summed up in a few words, the co-operation of all the
forces of Government to hasten the moment when the truth shall be
discovered; to put an end as soon as possible to such a martyrdom.
But whatever may come of it, I want to repeat to you always, that high
above all our sufferings, above all our lives, there is a name that must
be re-established in all its integrity in the eyes of all France. This
sentiment should reign in your soul, in the souls of us all.
I wish only for you, my poor darling, as for me, as for us all, that all
hearts may realize with us all the tragic horror of a situation so
appalling and borne so long, this terrible torture of human souls, whose
hearts are suffering, as under the blows of a hammer, night and day,
without truce or rest. I wish for us all that by a powerful union of
determined wills the only thing that we have so long asked for may be
brought to pass--the whole truth in regard to this sad tragedy, and that
I may hear soon one human word coming to put a soothing balm upon so
deep a wound.