[GONCOURT (Jules de)]. [Jules de Goncourt fait-diversier]. - Lot 77

Lot n° 77
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Estimation :
1500 - 2000 EUR
[GONCOURT (Jules de)]. [Jules de Goncourt fait-diversier]. - Lot 77
[GONCOURT (Jules de)]. [Jules de Goncourt fait-diversier]. Autograph letter jokingly signed "Dumolard cadet", illustrated with an original drawing. S.l., [1862]. One p. in-8. "C'est aux Invalides, votre appartement. It would bring me closer to Leroy, but -it's at Les Invalides. You must have read the Dumolard trial. It reminded me of Poulmann's beautiful words. He had murdered an innkeeper in an inn, while the innkeeper was making him a bacon omelette. The president asked him about the murder. He tells the story, and ends with the following: "Then, while he was making the omelette, I took a hatchet and split his skull, and I saw then, Mr. President, the truth of the proverb that says: he who holds the tail of the frying pan is in trouble... (close quotation marks). Ah! I'm writing to tell you that we'll be dining with you on Thursday. Dumolard cadet. [Countersigned below, in the same hand, in shaky handwriting:] Marie Bussod (autograph)." Jules de Goncourt alludes here to the serial killer Martin Dumollard, whose trial took place from January 29 to February 1, 1862; Marie Bussod, one of his victims; and Pierre-Joseph Poulmann, murderer of an elderly man, who was sentenced to death in 1844, whose "ferocious valour" before the guillotine was evoked by Charles Baudelaire in a Salon, and whose youth as an "orphan turned bandit" by Victor Hugo in LesMisérables. The drawing, occupying the top and left margins, depicts a "Hotel Dumolard" with advertising panels ("bureau de placement", "bonne bière"), with a figure at the window holding a lighted candle, and four figures in the smoke from the chimney with the caption "les hommes barbus" ("bearded men"). To the right of the hotel, a chase scene in which one man shoots another with a pistol, with a drawing of an eye behind the shooter captioned "the eye of the police with blue glasses", and, in front of the fugitive, a panel bearing the inscription "Montenku woods" (ink and pen). Jules de Goncourt's letters are rare, especially when illustrated. about a couple separated by emigration
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