Pierre-Jean de BÉRANGER (1780-1857). L.A.S., [La Grenadière - Lot 59

Pierre-Jean de BÉRANGER (1780-1857). L.A.S., [La Grenadière près Tours] January 24, 1837, to François Mignet; 3pages in-4, addressed. Beautiful letter to the historian, during his stay at La Grenadière. He reassures Mignet: "I like my shack very much, and in spite of the tarnish of glory given to it by M. de Balzac, I see that one can live there safe from intruders". [La Grenadière is a short story by Balzac, inspired by his stay in this house in 1830]. He encourages Mignet to follow his example: "The love of retirement is enough for me to feel good about it [...] in such solitude, your work would have been finished a long time ago, and I wouldn't still be saying to myself: but when will I read it? Hurry up, we old people, we have to fear not that what is good and right will not happen, but that we won't be there when the time comes"... From his retreat, he follows politics: "Thiers, whose words I have read and reread, seems to me to have placed himself higher than he had been previously... Never had he shown such great talent applied to such great strength of reasoning". It is unlikely, however, that he will be able to return to power for some time to come. Commenting on the notice Mignet has just written on Sieyès, he describes it as "a perfect appreciation of the great role played by this revolutionary oracle. I was delighted to find in it the little anecdote that M. de T. [Talleyrand] told us at M. Laffitte's [...] So Sieyès thought of the national guard before Lafayette. He thought before Laf. dreamed"... He evokes his friend Fabreguettes' search for a consulship, and concludes with his lack of inspiration: "shapeless essays, produced in fits and starts, that's at most what I'm capable of, prose songs, good or bad, that's all. [...] And then I no longer believe in anything other than the possibility of writing history. Its time has come for us, and you are going to give us new proof of it"... He congratulates Mignet on his recent election to the Académie française (December 29 1836): "I thought you were going to stand in the way of Hugo, who doubly needs the Académie. What a surprise it was to see that it was C. Bonjour that you had the door shut in his face. I don't know whether to congratulate you on being from a corps that was on the point of preferring you to Bonjour, and that everyone would have preferred you to Hugo"... Attached is a L.A.S (1p. in-8) to Rousselin de Saint-Albin.