DESMOULINS (Camille). Autograph letter signed to a demoisell - Lot 4

DESMOULINS (Camille). Autograph letter signed to a demoiselle Babet. Paris, July 22, 1783. One p. 1/4 in-folio, on a sheet of paper mitered on a modern paper support. RARE LETTRE D'AMOUR DE CETTE HAUTE FIGURE DE LA REVOLUTION, then a penniless lawyer in search of a wife. "Will you forgive me for neglecting the opportunity to see you when I passed through Compiègne last year? I am inexcusable, but this fault would be half forgiven, if you knew how much I reproached myself for it; often I have in mind that evening when, on my return, I saw you at Madame Maurice's ; I had a thousand things to say to you, and I couldn't even express them with my eyes, which were spied on from all sides. With you, I felt like I was sitting on roses, and I only felt thorns. At least, if I had had my eyes free, but when they turned towards you of their own accord, I was forced to call them back by propriety and delicacy. Fortunately, I didn't need to stare at you to keep your image; I had it constantly before my eyes during the vacations, and it followed me to Paris, where it received my faithful homage every day; most of the verses I wrote this year, I owe to you; it was you who inspired them. It seems that at this moment, out of gratitude, I should address a few of them to you; but the dear abbé who will hand you this letter, and who knows all my occupations, must tell you that I have undertaken a long-term work, independently of my other occupations; this work does not allow me to address an epistle to you, and you will only have a letter from me for this time. Not to address a few verses to you to you whom I have only seen for a day but of whom I think unceasingly, you whose enchanting sight of the pleasures that love gives made me feel the sweet intoxication, This is one more reproach I have to make to myself, but all these wrongs I have towards you, if I were happy enough to have a private conversation with you and to be able to show you the feelings of my heart, I think you would forgive me. I'm planning to go to Compiègne around 7th February, and I'm already distressed to think that my dear Maurice will be at his seminary by then. How can I see you, talk to you, I who am already so disconcerted, so shy of beauty! How often I have wished that Compiègne was only 5 or 6 leagues from Paris, that from time to time we could have ridden together, the two of us, Maurice, and you know who we would have gone to say hello to in Compiègne. He can tell you that when I was with him, I couldn't talk about anything else. Sometimes, when he saw me returning from a public promenade, the rendezvous of all the capital's beauties, he would ask me if I was happy, me without thinking then of paying you a compliment, my answer was almost always: "If I knew a more tender name, I'd give it to you, but since I know it's yours, I don't know one that inspires more tenderness... " Arthur MEYER (Mes livres, mes dessins, mes autographes, Paris, s.n., 1921, no. 123, autographs, 3; Paris, Drouot, Francisque Lefrançois et Noël Charavay experts, June 3-6, 1924, no. 129, autographs, 3). - Christian LAZARD (Paris, Drouot, May 19 1967, no. 62). - Robert GERARD (Paris, Drouot, June 19-20, 1996, no. 226).