Prosper MÉRIMÉE (1803-1870). L.A., Montpellier... - Lot 135 - Ader

Prosper MÉRIMÉE (1803-1870). L.A., Montpellier April 24 [1868], to Countess Sophie de Beaulaincourt; 4 pages in-8. Very beautiful and spiritual letter. In Montpellier to follow his cure, Mérimée trusts a Dr. Bertin, who promised not to cure him but to relieve him: "He puts me every morning for two hours in penance in a small iron tower that looks very much like the monuments that adorn the boulevard and that we owe to M. de Rambuteau. We are very comfortably seated there in a large armchair. There is enough light to read, and a paper with a pencil to convey one's wishes to the man who takes care of the device. As soon as the door of the tower is closed, a steam engine compresses air in it. You don't know which way it comes or which way it goes, but after two minutes you have a firework in your ears. He read Jules Favre's reception speech, less nasty than he would have expected, but too academic. "He treats his sentence like a provincial who starts in Paris ... Yesterday he received a letter from Sainte-Beuve: he "sharpens his claws for the session where the petition on freedom of education will be discussed. I am glad that he is speaking, but I fear that he is too incisive and not circumspect enough with all the Eminences he will have to deal with. I understand that his Friday dinner [Good Friday] caused a great scandal. He tells me that there were no ladies but confesses that he ate a chicken..." And to end with the news from Spain: "I am stunned at the death of Narvaez. I no longer see a man who frightens the Spanish Reds. The Conchas lack neither energy nor courage, but they are surrounded by all the gropers, and they are not square men like poor Narvaez. The Pope has sent him a most ample absolution. He needed it. He had once gotten his hands on the bull of the crusade. It's money that Spain pays the Pope to make fat on Fridays and Lent, because no one's skinny. Narvaez had given pensions to his friends with papal money and it was the funniest distribution imaginable. There wasn't a rascal in Madrid who hadn't lived on Crusade money"...