Georges DUHAMEL (1884-1966). Typescript signed with autograph corrections, Le Voyage de Patrice Périot, [1950]; autograph title and 257 leaves in-4, all sewn in red heavy paper cover, red half-maroquin folder, slipcase. Complete typescript of the novel published by Mercure de France in November 1950. According to Émile Henriot (Le Monde, January 3, 1951), "Le Voyage de Patrice Périot will go down among Georges Duhamel's best books, and it's a fine return to the novel for him, since the completion of Chronique des Pasquier. These are still "Mémoires imaginaires", as Duhamel likes to say of these writings of romantic affabulation for which personal experience has provided the framework and background. This immediately demonstrates the solid substance and human interest of this new work, in which the author has put a great deal of himself, without there being any question, of course, of autobiography in these transposed confidences". Patrice Périot, a biologist with a wealth of honors, a committed scientist and a signatory to all kinds of petitions, realizes one day that he is no longer free and that he has been regimented; he wants to regain his freedom. He is also confronted with a family tragedy, when one of his sons is found dead in the Seine; he committed suicide, but the press seizes on the affair and turns the death into a political assassination. Périot wonders "if he really was a good father. Even his science worries him. What is this reason to which one has sacrificed everything in one's life, which is not a sufficient reason to explain the immense mystery around us? What is this intelligence incapable of giving peace? How can we find the truth when professionally we believe in nothing that can't be demonstrated?" (E. Henriot). His inner journey leads the agnostic to religion...