Jules SUPERVIELLE (1884-1960). Autograph manuscript signed; half-page in-4 (typographical marks in blue pencil). Response to an inquiry about Christopher Columbus and America. "Columbus did well to land in America. If [...] this continent had not yet been discovered, there would be hundreds of millions of us who would not yet know where to be born, and who would be waiting, without really believing in it, for a favorable opportunity". However, this discovery was "absolutely harmful to the natives. Entire tribes have been massacred, and all that remains in museums are a few feathers and a few poorly poisoned arrows. We sometimes hope that America will be discovered again (and in better conditions than the first time), but how can we make the Americans, who almost all already have a pied-à-terre and their boot-maker in Paris, believe it now?