Maurice Saillant, known as CURNONSKY (1872–1956). Autograph manuscript, *Bonheur du jour*, [circa 1895]; 2½ pages in-4, and 1 page in-8. Draft manuscript for *Willy*, for which Curnonsky served as one of the “ghostwriters.” “The Baron de Loguivy—fifty years old—in excellent shape—a former officer, widower of a very pretty woman whom he loved madly but who did not return his love—retired after losing his fortune to a country estate (in Brittany or the Basque Country) […] He left behind in Paris a charming mistress, Mariette Nordy—half courtesan, half ham—thirty-five years old—very intelligent and with a head for business,” to whom he writes regularly, recounting his adventures: “It’s exactly *Dangerous Liaisons* in reverse”… He concludes: “She will set the local courtesan on the pretentious dandy, who will be duly ruined, etc. (us today). Thus, balance will be restored, and as Mademoiselle Anglochère says in *Flipote* [a comedy by Jules Lemaitre, 1895]—everything will return to normal, the true social order founded on everyone’s selfishness, baseness, and vice. And it will be a lovely moral tale in action. All the letters will, of course, have a very different tone and will be found, as if by chance, in a writing desk called ‘happiness of the day.’” At the end, an autograph note from Willy: “Old Cur, It’s ingenious and has great potential (I can’t say the same about my uncle). But I implore you to abandon this arbitrary and outdated form of the epistolary novel. You know, after all, that the public detests it! A compromise: one-third letters; two-thirds narrative. Does that work?”