Page:Lettres d'un innocent; the letters of Captain Dreyfus to his wife ; (IA lettresduninnoce00drey).pdf/253

 grow up dishonored; I can no longer agonize in a black hole for an abominable crime that I did not commit. And now I am waiting; I expect each day to hear that the light of truth is to shine for us at last.

I embrace you, as I love you, with all the power of my love; also our dear and adored children.

Your devoted

.

A thousand, thousand kisses to your dear parents, to all our family.

25 February, 1898.

Dear Lucie:

Our thoughts are in harmony; my thought does not leave you for one single instant day or night; and should I listen only to my heart I should write to you each moment, every hour.

If you are the echo of my sufferings, I am the echo of yours, of the sufferings of you all. I doubt that human beings have ever suffered more. The thought of you, of the children, and my longing always outstretched toward you, toward them, still always give me the strength to compress my bursting brain, to restrain my heart.

I have written you numerous letters in these last months; to add anything to these letters would be superfluous. I have told you all the appeals I have addressed since November last—appeals in which I ask for my rehabilitation, for justice for so many innocent victims.

In one of my last letters I told you that I had just addressed a last appeal to the Government, an appeal more earnest, more energetic than any that I had made