KESSEL (Joseph). [Alexandre Stavisky]. Unsigned autograph manuscript. Circa 1934 ? 7 leaves in-8, 13.5 x 21 cm, handwritten on the front. Draft of a story (?), difficult to read, with erasures and additions. Trace of paperclip. In conversation with his friend Guy, an underworld adventurer, Kessel recounts the life and death of Alexandre Stavisky, the Russian-born financier behind a number of major embezzlement deals, who was found in Chamonix on 8 January 1934 with two bullets in his head (suicide or murder?). He refers in particular to the case of the forged Bayonne Municipal Credit vouchers. Kessel had published "Stavisky, l'homme que j'ai connu" (Stavisky, the man I knew) with Gallimard in 1934. He himself had been compromised and then acquitted in these cases.