Gabriel BELOT (1882-1962). 6 L.A.S., 4 of which illustrated, 1920 and n.d., to Marguerite Steinlen and Germaine Perrin; 8 pages and a half in-fol. or in-4. Nice gallant correspondence illustrated with pen-and-ink drawings, some of them enhanced with colors. The painter-poet addresses his "dear little ones", Marguerite Steinlen (niece of the painter) and his companion Germaine Perrin (who will become the third wife of the composer and conductor D.E. Inghelbrecht). Saturday. He thanks them for their letter, although Marguerite gives him "mossieu", and Germaine shows a certain distance "that calms the beating of my heart, so that I find myself shivering. Excuse my frankness, it comes from a being who only wants to love. [...] to close oneself is to nip in the bud the gestures of fraternity". - Tuesday. A long letter illustrated with a child's head and colored flowers in the margins: "It is not nothing to have met! A man roué of blows by the destiny meeting two charming beings good and noble! A man who cries out to you in his love: believe in happiness, it exists if we want it". He addresses the two young girls, of whom he paints a touching portrait: "Little Germaine, expressive, laughing and generous, obliged at a young age to live alone, sinisterly alone and austere, with laughter deep in her soul. Little Marguerite, straightforward and noble, obliged to hide the nobility of her self so as not to be called a pimple or any other description as harmonious as it is ridiculous. He plans to come to see them and read them La Légende de St Julien l'Hospitalier by Flaubert "in a loud and distinct voice. Laugh, but laugh, my darlings. It is in this that you are young and that a poor man asks you the alms of a smile and the permission to look at your eyes full of a dew of tears given by the rhythm of three souls who found themselves... Phew! What one has of it evil to distract the small girls when one grieved them"... - December 12, 1920, he draws doves and trees beaten by the rain: "Nature is just like the men of which it makes body, neither good nor bad"... - Ile St Louis, with a drawing of a flower: "to think that my engraving gives you a little of the breath that haunts me, I am happy even though my hand translates weakly what I feel"... - Friday morning 7am. He came back early in the morning: "The calm and the sweetness of life came down from the sky... In the Ile St Louis? The trees were caressing each other while listening to the rhythm of the water [...] Let's thank you again my dear and delicate friends: I am so unaccustomed to tender gestures that when I happen to meet these rare flowers, I find myself drunk like a Cossack! He concludes his letter with a pretty drawing of motherhood. - December 20, 1920, in the form of a prose poem entitled A friend: "I think of a friend. His soul as soon walks in front of me... His eyes stare at my eyes and his heart beats in my heart. [...] I think of a friend: The sky becomes brighter. - His word? I hear it in the whisper of a leaf and in the harmonious sound of the wind"...