BALZAC Honoré de (1799-1850). Lot n° 2

L.A.S. "from Balzac", 22 May [1833, to Émile DESCHAMPS]; 1 and a half pages in-8 on fi n paper. Beautiful letter, partly unpublished, on the Contes drolatiques. [The "first dain" of the Contes drolatiques had been published by Gosselin in April 1832, and the second one was going to be published by the same editor in July 1833. Balzac compliments Deschamps on his "physiological" tale René-Paul et Paul-René which had just appeared in volume III of the Livre des conteurs]. He sends his thanks to Deschamps "for the good fortune you have given me. I had already read, on a trip, enticed by your name, the Two Brothers, which I have just reread on returning to my Parisian home - and this delightful adventure, full of poetry, had struck me so strongly that I wanted to read it again. With the deluge of tales with which we are inundated, your Paul, this double being, is one of those creations destined to remain in all artistic memories. But I would have liked more details, not a tale, but a story, a book, like Paul and Virginia, greedy as I am! But you set out to make a tale and without knowing it or knowing it without doubt, you went further, like all the spirits who (pass me this triviality,) always enlarge the hole through which they pass because they are great. [...] In order not to be insolvent myself, I hope to be able to send you the first and second daints of the Contes drolatiques within a few days, and if, by chance, I had sent you the first daint, please let me know, because Gosselin is as stingy as a bookseller, and measures me the copy as God measures the wind to the shorn sheep. I would like this exchange of our colonial products to earn me another book from you, too lazy a poet who undoubtedly dreams your books and does not write them, like a jealous sultan of your intellectual seraglio". [Émile Deschamps replied to Balzac the next day: "I will keep your letter, which is a letter of nobility for me, for the rest of my life. It is a family title, and my heart and forehead are triumphant... Correspondence (Pléiade), t. I, n° 33-84, p. 796.