Page:Lettres d'un innocent; the letters of Captain Dreyfus to his wife ; (IA lettresduninnoce00drey).pdf/95

 courage that enables him to bear, without fainting, the worst of outrages, scorn and shame, there is a great difference. I have never lowered my head, believe it; my conscience forbade that. I have a right to look all the world in the face. But, alas! all the world cannot look into my soul, into my conscience. The fact is there, brutal and terrible. That is why each time that I receive one of your dear letters I have a ray of hope; I hope at last to hear some good news. If the Léons have come back to Paris, their impatience not letting them wait, only think how it is with me. I know that you all suffer as I do, that you partake of my anguish and my tortures, but you have your activity to distract you, a little, from this awful sorrow; while I am here, impatient, shut up alone night and day with my thoughts.

I ask myself even now how my brain has been strong enough to resist so many and so oft-repeated blows; how is it that I have not gone mad.

It is certain, my darling, that it is only your profound love which can make me still hold on to life. To have consecrated all my strength, all my intelligence, to the service of my country, and then suddenly to be accused of the greatest, the most monstrous, crime a soldier can commit—condemned for it—that is enough to disgust one with life! When my honor is given back to me—oh, may that day come soon!—then I will consecrate myself entirely to you and to our dear children.

And then think of the terrible way I have still to traverse before I shall arrive at the end of my journey—crossing the seas for sixty or eighty days under conditions so appalling. I do not speak—you know it—of the material conditions of the passage; you know that my body has never worried me much; but the moral con