Louise ACKERMANN (1813-1890). 44 L.A.S. (mostly "L.V.A." or "L.A."), Nice (and a few other places) 1848-1871, to her sister Caroline Fabrègue; approx. 140 pages in-8, 4 addresses (slight cracks to a few letters, 15 lines cancelled in one letter, several underlining and colored pencil marks). Important and beautiful correspondence between the poetess and her sister. Most of these letters are written from her estate at La Lanterne, on the heights of Nice, where Mme Ackermann had retired, far from the world, near her youngest sister Euphrosine Girard. Her younger sister Caroline Fabrègue lived in Clermont, Oise, where her husband was a notary; a few letters are addressed to her nephew Jules Fabrègue. We can only give a brief overview of these long and dense letters. The correspondence begins with the events of 1848, whose jolts Louise felt as far away as Nice, and she lived in anxiety; she did not, however, give up enriching her library: "I'll buy books as long as I can; it'll only be when I'm down to my last penny that I'll stop. It's my only item of consumption, and it's said that to consume is to be good, a patriot [...] In the stormy times we live in, you have to expect to be cut off sooner or later; I may have to go one fine morning to seek my life in a foreign land" (March 8, 1848). Reading the newspapers does little to reassure her, and disorder reigns: "the workers are stirring, the nobles are trembling lest their property be set on fire. Baptiste took his master's rifle to protect the house [...] I'd be very surprised if there wasn't general looting in France in the near future. I'd even go so far as to fear some home massacres. Who knows if the guillotine won't start working again" (March 23, 1848). She spent the summer of 1850 in England, in Painswick, to improve her English; she didn't much like London and was "choked with pudding, English ladies are only busy stuffing themselves from morning to night they are perpetually afraid of falling into syncope so their existence is nothing but a long series of indigestions"... For twenty years, the two sisters exchanged ideas. Louise gave news of the family, their health and their livestock, and told her about her daily routine, her farming activities on her estate at Rimier and then at La Lanterne. She enjoys the solitude of her countryside: "I'm pretty rustic there, but I have all my books, and that's a great point. I don't see a soul, and time passes incredibly quickly for me, even though I get up early and go to bed late. I read and study things that interest me immensely" (October 16, 1850). She went for walks and excursions in the mountains, and in 1851 moved to her new estate, La Lanterne, which she describes to Caroline, where she led a quiet life, watching over the buildings and plantations: "I see the years coming without fear. My books and my land fill my time pleasantly, and I do perfectly well without others, as well as they do without me" (April 1852). But she also revived her literary ambitions. In 1854, she was in Paris and received a letter from Béranger: "My volume has delighted him. [...] Sainte-Beuve came to spend an evening with me - at last I'm beginning to have literary ambitions. My book [Contes, Garnier 1855] is very popular everywhere. What I need now are articles in the newspapers, and I've been made to hope for some. [...] Béranger is cheerful and witty and quite a gentleman"... From the top of her hill, she could see Nice changing and developing: "The taste for a beautiful climate is beginning to take hold. For several winters now, Nice has been overflowing with foreigners. People are building furiously, and there's still not enough housing. [...] If the peace lasts, there will soon be no more cultivated land around Nice, and everything will become building land". She wants to build a belvedere over the Lanterne: "The view is admirable. From up there, you can see the Villefranche and Antibes lighthouses, the course of the Var, Saint-Jeannet, Aspremont, all the mountains behind Mont Chauve, the mountains of France, Cagnes, the Gulf of Juan, the islands, Cannes, Nice, and you can count the buildings in the harbor. You'll agree it's a shame not to enjoy a view like this, it's a unique place. I see snow all summer long, and the breezes that come in from the mountains are deliciously fresh" (December 17, 1856). She loves animals, especially her dog Lion, "the king of dogs". She talks about her reading: Renan's Life of Jesus, George Sand's Mademoiselle La Quintinie, Simeon Pécontal's The Divine Odyssey, which was a great success.