Jules BARBEY D'AUREVILLY. Autograph manuscript signed "J. B. d'A.", Preface to Ridicules du Temps, [1883] ; 2 pages fol. in red half-maroquin binding (V. Champs). Preface to his book Les Ridicules du Temps (Rouveyre et Blond, 1883). The manuscript, in black, red and yellow inks, shows erasures and corrections, with a few additions in pencil. "They are not all in this book... But here are a few of them, taken from the very flat surface of a society whose only depths are its vices. Ah! if this book were about the vices and not the ridicules of the time! it would have more depth... But to show them, these vices, it would be necessary to describe them, and the hypocrisy of an age which has invented the complicated art of combining the hypocrisy of regulated societies with the cynicism of its own derangements, would wither such a work if it were true, and who knows? perhaps prosecute it before its adorable tribunals, as immoral and dangerous... While waiting for the courage to write it - if it ever comes to him - the author of Ridicules du Temps, who is bored like everyone else in this age of boredom, when people are dying of it, wondered if there was still a way to write a cheerful book, and there he planted the idea of a sad book, wanting only to skim, with a light hand and spoon, over the edges of the poisoned milk pot of contemporary vices, the ridiculousness that is its foam and cream. It's an essay. But will it be cheerful, even at this price? And so on. And he concludes that society "does no more, with its senseless education, than develop mediocrities to the point of the most splendid silliness. Come on! It's not just women, it's the whole century that's low-blue... Once again, it is not the fault of the author of Les Ridicules du Temps if he has only those of his own century to offer. A pedantic century, whose latest invention was free and compulsory education. It is a century of the cuistre, and one that would like to fuck up all mankind, just as he did! 2 portraits, one engraved by J.L. Perrichon, and Paul Verlaine's article on Barbey d'Aurevilly in Les Hommes d'aujourd'hui (no. 282), illustrated with a portrait by Coll-Toc, have been mounted in the front endpaper. Ex-libris Léon Schück.