Georges COURTELINE (1858-1929). Autograph manuscript signed, - Lot 75

Georges COURTELINE (1858-1929). Autograph manuscript signed, Préface, [1902]; 5 1/4 pages in-fol. (slight cracks at folds and small tear on last page). Manuscript, with erasures and corrections, of his Preface to Bertol-Graivil's book, Main droite et main gauche, published in 1902. "Bertol-Graivil doesn't pull any punches [...] and makes it his mission to advocate cuckolding and sing its benefits". Courteline refers to Molière in L'École des femmes and admits that he himself "greatly appreciated the pleasures of cuckolding" until, having pinched "a stranger hidden in the dirty linen cupboard of a person dear to my heart, I passed without transition from the gentle to the serious, from the pleasant to the severe". Far be it from him to put Bertol-Graivil's book on trial: "Our dear gaiety doesn't run so much through the streets, that having had the good fortune to come across a cheerful book, I can give myself the luxury of peeling it like an onion, scraping it like a salsify, haggling with it, in a word, over the ins and outs, the whys and wherefores of its precious good humor. [...] The book is, I repeat, deliciously amusing, full of both the buffoonish verve [...] and the delicate, snide, somewhat melancholy observation that made Monsieur de Madame such a success a few months ago"...Courteline concludes by recalling La Fontaine's theory: "When you don't know, it's nothing; when you do know, it's very little", and Armand Silvestre's phrase: "I don't see why my friends shouldn't play music on the same violin as me"...