Louis-Ferdinand CÉLINE. 6 L.A.S., also signed by Lucette, [Neuilly August-September 1951], to his friend Paul Marteau in Cannes; 32pages in-4, envelopes. Unpublished letters about her return to France, her stay in Neuilly and her move to Meudon [the Destouches were welcomed and accommodated by Paul Marteau, in his Neuilly mansion, before moving to Meudon, while the Marteau family were vacationing in their Cannes villa]. Saturday [August 11]. Céline is panic-stricken by the prices... "we're pretty well off in your Palais-férie! What nights! If I didn't have to go out I'd be perfectly happy! [...] Here everything is perfect, the menagerie is calm. Everyone goes to bed at 9 p.m. - gets up at 8 - and there are never any visitors! Monday [August 13]. "What a disgrace this telephone is! It crackles worse than in 1900! and we would have Sydney limpid! That's modern life for you. No toads in the river? That's because they've gone back to Paris! They know how to live! Like us, here in the enchantment of your home. The horror is getting out". He went with Lucette to see "an old Russian friend, a dancer. In twenty minutes of convulsions, this brave hysteric wore me out for eight days - and Avenue du Bois! She dervishes on the sidewalk, kisses my hands! I looked like Rasputin to her. I fled in a cab"... August 15. "We're thinking of you and full of gratitude, we're enjoying your admirable home immensely, we're enjoying Madame Thérèse's cooking immensely, delicate, varied, invigorating, which Lucette is doing so well [...] it's a terrifying bliss - because what a tomorrow all this is preparing for us! We're used to jumping into the abyss! [...] We're going to end up with a little suburban bungalow, cheap but too expensive for its ugliness, but with a garden - which we absolutely must have"... Sunday [September 16]. Beginnings of the move to Meudon... "we went into the cellar to play 'purifier'... if we're going to take any away!". But he knocked over the vinegar maker in the process... "We'll go to Meudon tomorrow morning to take it all [...] Tomorrow morning, Monday, your people are going to make the weevils. I have the key and I'm on the maneuver. As soon as it's done, I'll put on the hard stuff - as agreed - and with the blower at the ready, I'll wait for the brigands! Don't worry - it's Bessy [bitch] the traitor who's going to give them skates like that! Only Bébert [cat] and I are tough"... Thursday [September 20]. On settling in at the "Douloureuse" (Meudon): tank and plumbing problems; but gardener Poncet is formidable: "He would have cleared Angkor in 8 days [...] I'm going to find myself good for 30 bags on my hillside [...] We made a move in a van that was worth its weight in gold. I was in the boiler room locked in with Bessy"... Then he talks about the libel suit against Ernst Jünger, "who is chickening out of his ignoble fiasco like all his peers, but as I've been soiled it won't go down so smoothly"; when Tixier returns, "there'll be sport"... He's going to go to the Domaines, "where it seems there are reasons why everything was stolen from me"... Saturday [September 22]. "Without felicity, without joy either, without illumination, we have capitulated, the bidet has won!" Parade of plumbers, to discover very serious leaks... "As for the "Douloureuse" itself, it's not to give you a glimpse of the beauty it has achieved, you can't tell - inner beauty that is to be guessed from the outside - paint, shine, youth, everything inside! The painters (3) who achieved this perfection have left. - The electrician did things too"... He comes home empty-handed from the Estates Office: "They say I'm just a dirty old fart - that I still owe them money - even though they've already taken everything from me. That's how heroes are treated. [...] Oh, but I won't let them get away with it - I'm threatening to re-enlist in the European army, with my medal, won back by the law!