François MAURIAC. L.A.S. "Fr.", February 7 [1938?], to his "dear little Jacques" [Jacques Laval]; 4 pages small in-4. Very beautiful letter, to the young priest Jacques Laval, in which he speaks half-heartedly about his homosexuality and his temptations. He has guessed in his letters "many difficulties, many struggles", now that he is no longer carried by the rules, by "the mechanics of the seminary". What is new is to "play your part in the secret drama of our lives, alone and under the gaze of a God who is not always [...] 'sensitive to the heart'. [My dear Jacques, you are right to believe that I love you, but you have great illusions about me. It is all very well to say that one does not grow old: yes! the heart dries up. I suffer less, I do not suffer any more by the heart, [...] I do not suffer any more from the abasements and the carnal miseries. [...] my tragedy is not to be misunderstood, but on the contrary to give an idea of me which does not correspond to the being that I really am and whose misery would frighten these little priests of whom you speak and who do me too much honor by judging me on a certain level. My tragedy is to have loved sincerity above all else and to have ended up with this lie of my life - for I am bound by my former attitudes, by my pious books. God will punish me by putting on my face the mask that I hate the most in the world: that of Tartuffe... And yet, one must not scandalize... One must be silent, must one not?"... He then speaks to her about his nephew Bruno Gay-Lussac, who brought him a novel that astonished him, but he advises her not to expect anything from him, "this small, closed and icy being, without the slightest affection. For me, I have always classified it with the refrigerators. And I love him all the same with all my heart"... He asks to pray for him because he is not "in a good situation (I am never in a good situation) [...] - may God keep you, - may Christ who loves you, return to you in love all that you do for his poor, for his children, for his sick, his cancer patients, his men of letters!"...