Page:Lettres d'un innocent; the letters of Captain Dreyfus to his wife ; (IA lettresduninnoce00drey).pdf/112

 As letters will be very long in reaching me, send me a dispatch when you have good news to announce to me. My life hangs upon this expectation. Think of all that I am suffering.

28 March, 1895.

I was hoping to receive news of you at about this time; as yet I have heard nothing. I have already written you two letters.

I know nothing as yet beyond the four walls of my chamber. As for my health, it could not be very brilliant. Aside from my physical miseries, of which I speak only to cite them, the cause of this condition of my health lies chiefly in the disorder of my nervous system, produced by an uninterrupted succession of moral shocks.

You know that no matter how severe they might be at times, physical sufferings never wrung a groan from me, and that I could look death coolly in the face if only my mental sufferings did not darken my thoughts.

My mind cannot extricate itself for an instant from the horrible drama of which I am the victim, a tragedy which has struck a blow not only at my life—that is the least of evils, and truly it would have been better had the wretch who committed the crime killed me instead of wounding me as he has—but at my honor, the honor of my children, the honor of you all.

This piercing thought of my honor torn from me leaves me no rest either by day or by night. My nights, alas! you can imagine what they are! Formerly it was only sleeplessness, now the greater part of the night is passed in such a state of hallucination and of fever that