Page:Lettres d'un innocent; the letters of Captain Dreyfus to his wife ; (IA lettresduninnoce00drey).pdf/193

 pursue and to attain the object, and let us hope, for your sake, that the time may not be too long in coming. Embrace your parents, our brothers and sisters, and all your family for me.

I embrace you as I love you, more passionately than I ever have done before—with all the strength of my affection, and kiss for me our dear and adored children.

Your devoted

.

5 o'clock in the morning.

Before I send this letter I must come once more to embrace you with all my soul, with all my strength; to repeat to you that your conscience, your duty, our children, ought to be for you irresistible levers too strong for any human grief to bend.

September, 1896.

Dear and good Lucie:

I wrote to you upon the receipt of the July mail. The nervous strain has been too strong, too violent. I have an irresistible longing to come to talk to you, after this long, agonized silence of a whole month.

Yes, sometimes my pen falls from my hands, and I ask myself what I gain by writing so much. I am dazed by all my suffering, my poor and dear Lucie.

Yes, often, also, I ask myself what I have done that you, whom I love so much, that my poor children, that all of us, should be called to suffer thus; and, truly, I