Alexandre DUMAS fils (1824-1895). Autograph manuscript signed, Un jour à vivre, June 3, 1853; 20 folios in-4 written recto on bluish paper, mounted on tabs in two quires. Amusing chronicle in the form of a letter to a magazine editor, about his incarceration in the National Guard prison, with numerous erasures and corrections, and passages crossed out. "My dear Director. It's been nearly six months since you did me the honor of asking me for a short story, since I promised you one and didn't deliver. It wasn't ill will, it wasn't forgetfulness; it was work on the one hand, laziness on the other, shyness perhaps. The beautiful paper of the magazine frightened me a little; the mistakes are too obvious; the names of your editors frightened me, they are too good judges [...] I'm in prison"... He recounts with humor his conviction for non-service of the National Guard, and his imprisonment, as his father had suffered; his stay in the prison, whose walls are decorated by artists (Decamps, Deveria, Daumier, etc.), or covered with poems... Etc.