*Stéphane MALLARMÉ. Pages/ Avec un frontispice à l'eau[-]forte par Renoir. À Bruxelles, chez l'Éditeur Edmond Deman, [5 mai] 1891; pet. in-4 br. flap folder, burgundy maroq. spine with nerfs, lined with gray suede (in harmony with the cover), lined slipcase (Alain Devauchelle). Partly original edition (see above) with Renoir's frontispiece, etching printed on fairly strong Van Gelder Zonen laid paper (here with horizontal piers) (see next). One of [74] ex. HC (see detailssupra) on Hollande light laid paper, bearing on verso of f.-t., below the justif.: "Exemplaire offert à". Mallarmé was happy to hand over dedications to intermediaries "to be inserted in the folio bearing Exemplaire offert à... de Pages", as he wrote to Edmond Bailly, the publisher of the Librairie de L'Art indépendant, who also sold them to him. Especially as in Valvins at this time of year: "The laziness of leaving a riverside and the foliage is unimaginable" (18/6/91, Marchal Corr. 1528). But it was to Deman that he asked for Maeterlinck's on 5/5/61: "you can keep four copies, those of Picard, Verhaeren, Maeterlinck and another, whose dedications I will send you; to avoid the expense of sending it back to Belgium" (Ibid. 1509). Autograph letter signed on a handsome glossy board (mounted on tab): "To Maurice Maeterlinck my long-standing admiration great Stéphane Mallarmé Valvins, 1891" Maeterlinck wrote to him on August 12, 1891: "My dear Master / I don't know how to thank you for sending me this divine book, which perhaps contains the supreme words of a wisdom already so far from us! - In what volumes, in what poems, to find what is realized here, with an exclusivism so natural, so habitual and so ardent that it is truly the mark of a God: to draw everything from what was not, and from the trembling black roots of all negation, Gardener who no longer works on our side of death, to make such affirmations blossom, whose seed can no longer be lost, although it is not said, that it does not need for it to germinate, the mysterious flowers of another life. I believe that the whole essence of the poet's work is indicated here, for the first time, in its terrible nakedness and simplicity. / I thank you again and very deeply, my dear and divine Master, and humbly tell you my absolute admiration." (Austin IV p. 293). Maeterlinck had absolute admiration for the poet, whom he met at his conference on Villiers in Ghent on February 13, 1890: "charming, fervent and handsome, very silent, that's how I saw him in Ghent", Mallarmé told Mirbeau (Marchal Corr. 1381). Mirbeau had secured his fame with the Figaro article of August 24, 1890, instigated by Mallarmé: "what joy the article on Maeterlinck would cause me, first of all that you also love the book, and the glitter around it; there's not even a smile, thinking of people's amazement" (Marchal Corr. 1377). [Of the small print run of 30 ex. h.c. of La Princesse Maleine in 1889, Maeterlinck had given Mallarmé the 1st of 5 Hollande copies, which disappeared in the Valvins floods. We had identified it in an interview with Maeterlinck in 1912, where he quoted it (see Bibliothèque littéraire d'un amateur [Louis de Sadeleer], Bruxelles, Simonson, 28/5/1988 n° 49 in fine)]. Fine scattered spotting, more concentrated on some pages, minor normal wear, given the strong volume, to the handsome two-tone (2d mute) glossy gray cover.