Auguste de VILLIERS DE L'ISLE-ADAM. Autograph manuscript signed, Maître Pied, [1889] 4 pages and a half in-fol. cut out and mounted on tabs on 9 oblong wove paper leaves in-4. Complete working manuscript of an ironic tale, written in 1889, but published after his death in Paris instantané on 19 and 20 August 1890, then in a slightly different version on 10 August 1891 in Le Magazine français illustré, where it is dedicated to Guy de Maupassant, and finally collected in the posthumous Propos d'au-delà (Calmann-Lévy, 1893). "Resolved this time, with a view to making my fortune, to becoming what the world calls a down-to-earth man, I felt the need of a Mentor. And who better to choose, for advice that was both more substantial and more subtle, than my family's former solicitor, Maître Pied, the most practical lawyer in Normandy? Maître Pied is on trial for setting fire to the château of his friend, the Baron des Gauds-d'Argental; his provocative attitude during the trial, humming revolutionary songs, earns him the maximum sentence. The narrator goes to visit him in prison, and shows him his collection of verses, Loisirs d'un contribuable, which provokes Pied's mockery. Pied admits to him that he was sentenced to the penal colony out of a "thirst for true consideration", and as the surest way to come to power, having studied the election posters featuring former convicts, arsonists and escaped convicts such as Félix Pyat: "these titles to the legislature are the most irresistible to the radical masses". Pied could thus be seen as a "martyr to the social cause". Having been deeply impressed, the narrator has to go to bed. "Back in Paris on 27 January 1889, what do I see on every wall? Citizen Pied's election posters! His official escape! Ah! how he makes the most of his credentials! What ingenious French mistakes! His triumph is assured". And the narrator runs to the polls to vote for Pied... And he concludes: "But I'm thinking about it! Let's hope that this model candidate doesn't unexpectedly run into one of those mysterious passions of the crowd for a passing stranger... mysterious passions in the face of which forecasts, calculations and sentences become smoke in a gust of wind - and which suddenly seem to light up the forehead of this passer-by like a glimmer of destiny! The manuscript, in black ink, is heavily crossed out and corrected. It contains two versions of the passage in which Pied predicts the narrator's future, as well as a few variations on the printed text. The title Maître Pied is calligraphed over a scratched-out primitive title: Un individu modèle.