Jules BARBEY D'AUREVILLY. P.S. (3 times) with autograph apostilles, 26 June 1873 2 pages in-4, tax stamp. Contract for the first edition of Les Diaboliques. Barbey d'Aurevilly grants publisher Édouard Dentu "the exclusive right to publish and sell, in two thousand copies plus double passe franche, a collection of unpublished short stories of which he is the author, and which are to be published under the general title Les Diaboliques"... The contract contained 6 articles, the last of which stipulated that if Dentu did not reprint the work after it was sold out, "the author would regain full ownership of this work"... Barbey d'Aurevilly "approved the above writing", then signed his name in red ink. Underneath, he twice noted and signed that he had received from Dentu "the sum of five hundred francs", on 9 August and 1 October 1873.