François MAURIAC (1885-1970). L.A.S., Vémars July 16, 1921, to Marcel PROUST; 2 pages in-8. Beautiful letter to Proust. On the release of his book Préséances, Mauriac is very touched by Proust's zeal to get him articles: "You can't prove your friendship to me any better, because I know what a letter costs you... But don't go to any trouble for me: 'begged' articles are worth nothing." His book has only been out for a month: "The N.R.F. has devoted to me (for my last two books) very kind notes and it would be very unpleasant for me to solicit this quaint person. As for the A.F., it has enough to do in providing the altars of Pierre Benoit with incense every morning [...] I will never forget your kindness towards me. An article from you? It would have been too beautiful and I never believed that the miracle I benefited from at 20 years old (a delicious article by Barrès on my verses [Les Mains jointes] in the Echo de Paris) could be repeated in my destiny. As a teenager, the master I loved the most praised me in a first Paris - at thirty, it would have been improbable that Marcel Proust, above whom I put no one, would have wanted to dedicate to me some of his marvelous sentences, whose meanderings are my delight. [...] I don't love any of my friends until I tell them everything. E. de G. chose me, I did not choose him (...sed ego elegi te), but I am grateful for his fidelity. A whole world in him displeases me, a whole "maliciousness" as your Léon [Daudet] would say - but in spite of that he is faithful and one is so lonely that in terms of friendship, nothing should be lost. When questioned, he admits to "skipping" "by laziness and horror of the crippled copy. [...] Dark? Monk? Spanish? Ah, you ignore my troubadour side, fortunately... But there is some Greco in me, perhaps... and many other things still"...