FLAUBERT (Gustave). Madame Bovary. Paris, Michel Lévy, 1857. In-12, red percaline, smooth spine, marbled edges (Binding of the period). Highly sought-after first edition. One of the rare copies on strong vellum, the only large paper, of which 75 copies were printed. This copy remains unknown in the list of large paper copies of Madame Bovary drawn up by Auguste Lambiotte. Exceptional autograph signed letter: Offered to Mme Elisa Maurice Schlesinger, as a tribute to an old and unalterable affection, the author his most devoted G. Flaubert. A very precious copy given by Flaubert to Elisa Schlesinger, the love of his life, the object of a lasting and unrequited passion. He made her the character of Mme Arnoux in L'Éducation sentimentale, and her disappointed love that of his hero Frédéric Moreau. A very moving Flaubertian relic. It is known that Flaubert first met Elisa Foucault (who became Madame Schlésinger in 1839) on the beach at Trouville in August 1836. He was fourteen and a half at the time, and as for Frédéric Moreau, "it was like an apparition". Ten years later, he wrote to Louise Colet: "I have only had one true passion. I was barely fifteen". As a law student in Paris, Flaubert was a regular visitor to the Schlésinger family from March 1843. He was close to Maurice, her husband (the future model for M. Arnoux), but also to Élisa. On the other hand, while it is "extremely likely that Flaubert confessed his love for her, that she was troubled by it and that a deep tenderness developed between them" (P.-G. Castex), nothing is certain about the nature of their relationship. After Flaubert left for Croisset in 1844, he rarely saw Mme Schlésinger again. Gérard-Gailly believes, however, that he remained haunted by her image and "pursued her ghost in all the women he met". In 1856, the year of Madame Bovary, Flaubert was invited to Baden (where the Schlésingers had settled) for the wedding of their daughter Marie: he refused, "but he was deeply moved: in his reply to Mme Schlésinger, he evoked Trouville and the vanished past. The correspondence continued for some time, on the occasion of Madame Bovary's trial, and Flaubert wanted to show, in the midst of the ordeal, that he still counted them as very reliable friends". (P.-G. Castex). Flaubert's last letter to Élisa was in October 1872: "The future has no more dreams for me, but the days of yesteryear seem to be bathed in a golden vapour. Against this luminous background where dear ghosts touch my arms, the figure that stands out most splendidly is yours, yes yours! O poor Trouville!..." The volume was bound in Germany - probably in Baden, where the Schlésinger family lived at the time. It is preserved in a lockable red half-chagrin "volume-box", a model registered by Édouard Rouveyre. Copy a little short of margins (17,5 x 12 cm); small angular wetness in the first leaves, scattered freckles; worn binding, spine largely missing and almost detached. A. Lambiotte, Le Livre et l'Estampe, n°12, 1957 and n°14, 1960 - M. Brun, Le Livre et l'Estampe, n°39-40, 1964 - P.-G. Castex, "Gustave Flaubert et Madame Schlésinger", Les Amis de Flaubert, n°17, 1960 - Émile Gérard-Gailly, Le Grand amour de Flaubert, Paris, 1944.