Page:Lettres d'un innocent; the letters of Captain Dreyfus to his wife ; (IA lettresduninnoce00drey).pdf/212

 also our dear and adored children, while I wait for your dear letters, the only ray of happiness that comes to warm my crushed and broken heart.

Your devoted

.

21 January, 1897.

Dear Lucie:

I wrote to you at length last night. I come again to talk to you. I repeat myself always, alas! I say always the same things; but when one suffers thus, without respite, he must needs open his heart, in spite of himself, to one in whose affection he trusts. And, then, this tension of the brain becomes too excessive, and I ask myself each day how I resist it. When I read over my letters I can see how powerless I am to express our common sorrow and all the sentiments that are in my heart. And, then, because excessive suffering, far from breaking down the soul that is energetic, urges it onward to energetic resolution, because when one has done nothing to deserve it one cannot permit himself to yield, to break down, or to die under even so frightful a fate—because of all this, dear Lucie, I have told you in all my letters, as I told you last night, "Gather around you, around you all, every assistance of every kind heart, so that you may at last see the truth of this sad tragedy, in which we have suffered so appallingly, and for so long a time." It is this that I would repeat to you at every instant in every hour of the day and night.

In a situation so pitiful, so tragic, which human beings cannot support indefinitely, we must rise above all pettiness of mind, above all bitterness of heart, and run straight onward to the end.