Jules BARBEY D'AUREVILLY. Autograph manuscript for À un dîner d'athées 4 folios folio (31 x 20 cm; several slight consolidations). Drafts for the short story À un dîner d'athées, fifth in Les Diaboliques. This working manuscript, mainly in black ink, but also sometimes in red and violet ink, contains numerous erasures and corrections, and interlinear additions, some in pencil or red ink. There are many variations from the published text. The leaves are numbered 7, 10, 17 and 18, corresponding, in the original edition, to p. 241 last line to p. 244 line 18; p. 248 line 4 to p. 251 1st line; p. 262 line 25 to the end of p. 264; p. 264 line 20 to p. 266 line 24. Sheets 17 and 18 do not follow each other, the beginning of sheet 18 giving a new version of the end of f. 17, where Tesson defends herself against a soldier. F. 17: "car elle imprinta ses dix griffes sur la figure assez avant pour qu'il en ait été marqué toute sa vie!"; f. 18: "car elle imprinta ses dix griffes sur la figure, à telle profondeur qu'il en a dû être marqué toute sa vie!". Concerning Mesnilgrand, the paragraph beginning "He had the gift of sarcasm" is preceded by this sentence (the words in square brackets are crossed out): "He was [, as we can see,] therefore a free [sarcastic] spirit, who allowed himself to be imposed upon by nothing or no-one". The beginning of folio 10 is much tighter than the published text, where Mesnilgrand is compared to Fontenelle. On f. 18, 'Le chevalier de Mesnilgrand au XIe siècle aurait été un croisé de Philippe Auguste ou de St Louis' (The knight of Mesnilgrand in the eleventh century would have been a crusader of Philip Augustus or of St Louis); Barbey adds in interlining, after 'crusader', the batches 'brûlant de foi' (burning with faith), which appears in the edition where the names of kings have disappeared. Some names will be changed. Deltocq is here called Desbrock; Captain Rançonnet is here called Rançonnant; the demoiselle d'Hémevès is here spelt d'Emevès. The town [Valognes], anonymous in the edition, is designated (f. 7) by the initial V... These leaves remained unknown to the publishers of Les Diaboliques.