GAULLE Charles de. 2 autograph manuscripts, Le Baptême, [1914]; 20 pages in-4 and 17 pages fol. Autobiographical short story. Unlike the stories of 1908 and 1910, this autobiographical short story, written in Lyon while he was in hospital in September 1914, "evokes the distress of a twenty-three-year-old soldier wounded at the start of the war and thus deprived of an adventure he had so 'dreamed' of, and bears witness to more authentic novelistic qualities" (Jean-Luc Barré). The story opens with the battalion gathering "in the courtyard of the Quartier Vauban [...] for the big departure". Lieutenant Langel is there, worried and melancholy: "My God! He had dreamt up this war! First out of a child's imagination, then out of the adventurous ambition of youth, and finally out of impatience with his professional ability. And now that the war was here, the officer was worried: would he be brave, he who had dreamed of being so brave?"... Anxious not to set a bad example to his men, he did not even glance at the friend who had come to say goodbye. The battle takes place in a small Belgian town; before the attack, the captain, suspecting that he will be killed, entrusts Langel with his wallet to give to his wife; on the way up, Langel, who has learned of his captain's death, is seriously wounded. At the military hospital in Lyon, where "the battle on the frontiers was constantly pouring in wounded", Langel lay in state: "Operated on the day before, his brain still hazy with ether, he was occupied by a single thought, that of his armies; the same thought that he could read in every eye and feel rising up from the city. There was no mention of anything else in the conversations of the four officers lying in the room. For a fortnight, our armies had been retreating before the enemy. The capital was threatened. Everyone knew that a supreme effort was being made to stem the invasion"... The wife, in her black veils, came to visit her lover, who gave her the wallet entrusted to him by her husband; that same evening, Langel wrote his mistress a break-up letter. The next morning, the newspapers carried the news of victory: "The enemy was retreating before our armies. The invasion had been contained, the future of our country was certain. In the hospital that day, it was as if the pain had died down. [Langel tried to apply the same balm to the wound of his torn love. Among so many sacrifices, with which victory was imbued, who knows if this one had not counted? The first draft manuscript (20 pages, large in-8), in black ink, is overloaded with erasures and corrections, in ink or pencil, with many passages entirely crossed out or deleted, and significant variants. The hero does not yet have a name. The conclusion has not yet found its final form: "X. thought. The whole of what he had just seen in the brutal light of the drama seemed to him to be united by an obvious link. With all his sincere mind he understood the eternal Truth: he had the unforgettable certainty that the existence of his race had once again triumphed thanks to the fruitful discipline of the Sacrifice." The final manuscript, written in black ink on larger-format paper (17 pages, large in-4), is written carefully in black ink, and still contains a number of erasures and corrections. The hero has found his name, and the conclusion has found its formulation. LNC, I, p. 93-100. The typescript is attached (12 pages large in-4); at the end, autograph signature "Charles de Gaulle", and autograph address: "M. de Gaulle, 14 Square Desaix, Paris XIVe" (his address from 1921 to 1931).