BALZAC Honoré de (1799-1850). Lot n° 18

BALZAC Honoré de (1799-1850). L.A.S. "de Balzac", May 22 [1833, to Émile DESCHAMPS]; 1 1/2 pages in-8 on fine paper. Beautiful letter, partly unpublished, on the Contes drolatiques. [The "premier dixain" of Contes drolatiques had been published by Gosselin in April 1832, and the second was to appear with the same publisher in July 1833. Balzac complimented 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 Deux Frères (Two Brothers), which I have just reread on my way back to my Parisian boudoir - and this delightful adventure, full of poetry, had struck me so strongly that I wanted to read it again. In the deluge of tales with which we are inundated, your Paul, this double being, is one of those creations destined to remain in every artist's memory. But I would have liked more details, not a tale, but a story, a book, like Paul et Virginie, greedy as I am! But you set out to make a tale, and without sssssknowing it, or undoubtedly knowing it, you went further, like all 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 1st and 2nd daints of the Contes drolatiques within the next few days, and if, by chance, I have sent you the 1st daint, please let me know, as 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 yet another book from you, too lazy a poet who undoubtedly dreams your books and doesn't write them, like a jealous sultan of your intellectual seraglio". [Émile Deschamps replied to Balzac the following day: "I shall keep your letter, which is a letter of nobility for me, all my life in this world. It is a family title for which my heart and forehead are triumphant"... Correspondance (Pléiade), t. I, n° 33-84, p. 796.