Léon BLOY (1846-1917). L.A.S. "L.B." (minute), [December 14, 1876], to Mme de Nomaison in Périgueux; 1 page large in-8. Draft with erasures and corrections, in tiny handwriting (60 lines). He asks her to intervene with her friend Mme. Krantz, who in turn could use her husband's connections to obtain a tobacco shop for his mother, Marie-Anne-Césarine Bloy; this approach seems to have been unsuccessful. [Krantz was chief engineer at the Ponts et Chaussées in Périgueux, Bloy père's boss]. The tone is pathetic: "As I write this to you, at this very moment, at two o'clock after midnight, I feel so overwhelmed and heartbroken that I almost want to throw myself on my bed of misery and burst into tears. Alas! my God, how dearly everything is paid for, even in this world. All the pain suffered because of me and which was my work, pain without number and without measure known to me, all the acts of ingratitude, of revolt, of contempt, all the negligence by which I tortured the hearts of my old parents, everything I could have done and didn't do, my whole life finally rises up before me and sits inexorably at the bottom of my appalled conscience. A poor and lonely old age, that's the wage of those who brought me into the world and brought me up with such valour, solicitude and tenderness. This is what blisters my infamous pride on both cheeks. My father, this poor unknown hero, may die without ever seeing me again"... Etc.