Alphonse de LAMARTINE (1790-1869). 65 L.A.S., 1828-1855 and s.d., to Mlle Delphine Gay, then Mme de Girardin; about 138 pages mostly in-8, numerous addresses. Very beautiful and important correspondence to the young poetess, then to the faithful friend, in communion in poetry. "I loved her until the grave, without ever thinking that she was a woman", he will write. We can only give here a too brief glimpse, through a few quotations, of this rich correspondence. Saint-Point December 31, 1828, thanking Mlle Delphine Gay for sending him his volume of verses [Le Dernier Jour de Pompéi], where he felt "a tone of melancholy which was less felt in the first volumes. Would you be less happy? When one has known you, that is to say loved you, one has the right to be interested not only in the work but even more in the writer. [...] For me I am happy and busy. But I don't write and especially I don't print anything. I don't dare anymore. I have passed the vein of poetic happiness. I am at the real quietude. That is better. I fear to compromise it and I sometimes make verses only to speak to myself "... Macon July 2, 1829, after a month spent seeing her often, "and always with a growing admiration and sympathy not only for your beautiful poetic genius, but for your thousand qualities of mind and soul which would make you loved even by those who could neither read nor hear"... Château de Montculot September 15, 1829. His friends dissuaded him from sending the verses he had composed: "They claimed that they were not compact enough, measured, trimmed, filed, to be addressed to a young and beautiful person like you; that one would put on the account of personal feelings what was only poetic admiration; that it would make a bad effect for you, a worse one for me"... He wonders about his "diplomatic destiny"... January 15, 1830, he is "in embarrassments of fortune and position", and very sad. He composes his speech of reception at the Academy: "I wrote these four days the eulogy of Mr. Daru. It is detestable, like what one writes on command when one wants to cry more than to write"... Saint-Point November 3, 1831. He authorizes Mrs. de Girardin to publish the verses that he had made for her... As for the politics, "it is never necessary to write it, it is necessary to make it in flesh and blood; [...] it is necessary for that only two very vulgar qualities rightness of spirit and vigor of character. [...] I renounce it for lack of voters and I reject myself for the rest of my days in inertia, in poetry and in philosophy, three things that go well together"... He thinks of leaving with Eugène Sue for the Levant at the end of the plague and cholera... [February 1836], refusing to go to the Huguenots: "I only like the song in the notes. He put erudition in it"... Macon November 7, 1837, on his "abdication of Dunkirk [...] I did not go to any election and I was appointed to three or four. Let it be said that there is no common sense in France when a poor man like me who walks alone, who lives outside the coteries, who despises the parties, who gives himself only to reason and to the country has three elections, two of which are impossible and one unanimous! One should never despair of an idea when it is right. [...] I have made immense progress in lawyering. I have improvised about sixty harangues to the general councils and to the electors which are really worthy of the sonorous pathos and the emptiness full of words of the lawyer orators who illustrate us at this time in the House. We are good people learning the patois with difficulty. Farewell. I have been secretly making verses by the thousands for six weeks between four in the morning and daylight. If the voters knew it! "... Monceaux June 16, 1838. "One must leave to the hand of God what would be hurt by the hand of men. Solitude and thought will give you sad serenity and firm courage. [...] Work, which is the supreme law, will also relieve you. Undertake like me some magnanimous work although with the certainty of not completing anything. What does the goal matter as long as you walk? [...] For me, I do nothing at all but stay in bed next to a window in the sun, three greyhounds on my warm feet and a book of some kind in my distracted hand? Then breakfast, riding, coming in, going out again, touching newspapers. This is a delightful life, as long as it only lasts a fortnight. But his finances are disastrous: "If I had to sell land, I would feel uprooted. It would be like selling my father and my mother and myself in all my past. It makes me sad sometimes, and I embrace my trees so that we will not be separated"... Hyères 10 [August 1840]. "Here we are in the war. [...] Mr. Thiers is the war Mr. Thiers is the end of the world. He must fall or we all stay. No middle ground. Your husband has been fighting wonderfully for eight years.