- ceive your good letters, the only rays of sunshine that
come to warm my cruelly wounded heart.
Your devoted
Alfred.
Kisses to your dear parents, to all.
5 June, 1896.
My dear Lucie:
I have not yet received your good letters of April, so I have been forced to content myself by re-reading, as I do each day, often many times a day, your good and affectionate letters of March, and from them I have drawn a little calm. I cannot, however, let the English mail leave without coming to gossip a little with you, without drawing near to you.
Oh, I can see you very well in thought from here, my dear and good Lucie, for you do not leave me for a single moment. I know the moments of your crises, when, after some one has given you hope, that hope is again disappointed; when, after a moment of relaxation, of peace, you fall back into a violent despair, asking yourself with anguish when we shall wake from this abominable nightmare in which we have lived so long. And then you write to me, and you find in your splendid soul, in your loving and devoted heart, the strength to hide from me the atrocious tortures, the appalling anguish through which you are passing.
And then I, who feel, who divine all that—I, whose heart is crushed and wounded in its purest sentiments, in its tenderest love, with the blood boiling in my veins, because I feel all the torture heaped upon us, upon
