I can, then, only repeat to you always, you must appeal to all devoted and generous spirits; and I have an intimate conviction that you will find such and that they will listen to this cry for help of a Frenchman, of a father, who asks of his country nothing but justice, the discovery of the truth, the honor of his name, the life of his children.
It is this that I tell you in all my letters; it is this that I repeated to you last evening; it is this that I now repeat to you more vehemently then ever. The more the physical forces decrease, the more ought the energies to increase, the will to press on. I can, then, dear Lucie, but wish for you and for me, for all of us, that this united effort may bring about its result.
I embrace you with all the power of my love, and our dear and good children.
Your devoted
Alfred.
5 February, 1897.
Dear and good Lucie:
It is always with the same poignant, profound emotion that I receive your dear letters. Your letters of December have just been given to me.
To tell you of my sufferings—what good would it do?
You must fully realize what they are, accumulated thus without one moment of truce or rest in which I might renew my strength and brace up my heart and my worn-out, disordered brain.
I have told you that I have equal confidence in the efforts of one and all; that, on one hand, I have an absolute conviction that the appeal I again made has been
