Jules BARBEY D'AUREVILLY. L.A.S., Valognes, Hôtel de Grandval-Caligny Thursday 5 [August 1875, to Mlle Annette Coppée] 4 pages in-8, place and date in red ink. "The seal that will close this letter bears the bad motto of my life. Everything happy that has ever happened to me has always happened too late. And here! It's a pleasure for me to write to you, and it's also too late that I'm writing to you. But that's the fault of the scattered life I lead here. [...] I am always on the move. I spend my time in the open air and lead the most disordered life. I don't know if your brother does much work on his shore, but I do know that I don't do much on mine, because I have three of them (me!) on three different seas. However, I still shake my cliquet of articles to keep up the habit. As for his latest article: "You're really worried about the Roman Empire! Women only care about their own. But your brother, who is a Bonapartist [...] must have understood the significance of the book by Fustel de Coulanges, who is a clever man and who, I swear to you, will not sink! It is incredible that the Bonapartist newspapers have not made a fuss about a book which, without seeming to touch it, establishes a superb tradition in the Bonaparte Empire. They saw nothing in this book... Have they even read it? And besides, it is still the same stupidity that rules the world, and its empire is still the greatest of all empires! He soon sent her another article: "It's a dissection of Mme Geoffrin's old heart. I discovered that it was a reliquary of love"... His health was "strengthened. The nerves are strong and the epigastrium as steely as a busk, - the busk that you don't want to wear, and which for me is Mohammed's sword for women! That's what they could use to conquer the Universe! The life I lead makes me as strong as a Turk. I drink cider like a Norman, air like an Arabian horse, and the smell of roses like a Persian poet. I have enough roses in my garden, Mademoiselle, to make a mattress for you, if a mattress could be afforded. But her "poor brother's" health was getting worse: "He is not even intellectually the ghost of himself. His brain is dying, without seeing that it is dying (fortunately!). The shadow rises towards his summit, which was once dazzling, and the ray that still trembles there will soon fade away". [Abbé Léon d'Aurevilly died on 14 November]. He asked for news of François Coppée: "How is his bile, this gentle morose? Is his Olive Tree progressing, in this sandy country where he is and where there are hardly any olive trees? He must be writing poetry for the time when he comes back to Paris - to that execrable, flat-footed Paris! If he's like me, he'll like the country where he lives better when he's no longer there. Remembering things left behind makes them more charming. I feel it, writing to you"... Correspondance générale, t. VII, p. 277.