Léon BLOY. Autograph manuscript, [L'Épopée byzantine et Gustave Schlumberger]; 8 ff. (14 pages) various sizes, mounted on tabs and bound in a large volume in-8 red percaline spine. Manuscript of the very first draft, abundantly crossed out and corrected, of this review of Gustave SCHLUMBERGER's L'Épopée byzantine d la fin du dixième siècle, published in La Nouvelle Revue from November 1 to December 15, 1906, published the same year in volume and reprinted in 1917 under the title Constantinople et Byzance. In this first draft, Bloy indicated the passages to be quoted from Schlumberger's book without copying them. The manuscript does not include the end of the third article, nor the fourth. ... "One hundred years of a frighteningly prodigious history! How did this man, this sigillographer, this furious collector of pieces of lead, dare to undertake such a task & how could he accomplish it under the receding stars? It is not I who would tell you. I would have fled from the first day. I speak of it today because it is extraordinary & confounding, because academies & institutes cease to exist when it is a question of such great things - God grant me such strength of love & contempt"... Bloy evokes the various episodes of the history of Byzantium: the conquest of Crete, the marriage of the Emperor Nicephorus with the widow of his predecessor, the two Bardas, the Syrian campaign of Basil II, etc. Former Daniel Sickles collection (XVII, n°7231).