Pierre LOUŸS. L.A.S. "Pierre", [18 May 1891], to Jean de Tinan; 4 pages in-4 in blue ink, envelope. Very beautiful letter to Tinan, about their mistresses. The letter is preceded by a Warning: "This letter must be read in the most affectionate tone". "It is perfectly true that I do not have a fatal passion for Therese. I spoke to her, a little at random, in Bullier, at the moment when you had just told me: I am estranged from her. And you offered her to me, at that moment, instead of Suzanne who was not free. - I take her to my table, I invite her: you blow her to me. Then, I leave in my turn and you hardly caught up with me, ten minutes later, only to ask me to pay for the drinks. [...] An hour later, three times in a row, and with an insistence that proved I didn't want to work underneath, I said to you: I won't have dinner with you if you take her. You answered me three times: I have no desire to take her. - So really I was not very happy when I saw that you were standing as a husband in the car [...] As you sleep with everybody, I could never find a woman in the neighborhood who did not belong to you and who is nevertheless drinkable. You have all the advantages since you live in the neighborhood, and I don't. When one of your wives doesn't please us, you abandon her. So it is with Mimi, Jeanne and others. - When she pleases us, she becomes for you the 35th great lover, and we have no right to think about it. - Choose, I beg you, a mistress, but choose her once and for all, and say: it is her. We will know it. But above all, I beg you, keep better the memory of what you say. Once before, with a woman whose name I forget, you told us first: If I could leave her! and then you made a scene because we had dismissed her (scene in front of a hat shop, in November). Now you offer me a woman you don't want anymore, and as soon as I accept her, you not only take her away from me but you accuse me of dirty tricks! I am not hurt by this, because it is from you, but all the same it is quite incoherent [...] From now on (because there is a way to arrange everything) I will ask you every day when I arrive in the neighborhood: What is the name of your mistress, the one who is not like the others and whom you love as you have never loved? Is it Jeanne, Stéphanette, Blanche-Marcelle, Juliette, Yvonne, Margot, Stella, Irmine, Mimi or Thérèse? - You will tell me; and I will not touch it. I promise you that. Are you happy?"...