Kiss the dear little ones.
I live in them and in you.
I embrace you with all my heart.
Your devoted
Alfred.
I hope to receive news of you before many days.
2 August, 1895.
My dear Lucie:
The mail from Cayenne arrived yesterday. I hoped to receive your letters as I did last month. This hope has been deferred. What shall I tell you, my dear and good Lucie, that I have not already said and repeated many times? If I have undergone the most shocking tortures, if I have borne up to this day a moral situation in which every instant is for me a wound, it has been because, innocent of that horrible treachery, I long for my honor—the honor of the name borne by our dear children.
Had I been alone in the world, probably, unable to have regained my honor for myself, I should have acted in another way.
Oh, in that case, I swear to you that I should have had the secret of this infernal machination. I should have left to the future the care of rehabilitating my memory. However incomprehensible to me this drama, in the end all would have been discovered—discovered naturally.
But there you were, there were our children, who bear my name, there was my family. I had to live to reclaim my honor, to sustain you by my presence, by all
