Léon HENNIQUE. Autograph manuscript signed, L'Accident de mo - Lot 436

Léon HENNIQUE. Autograph manuscript signed, L'Accident de monsieur Hébert, [1883]; 235 folio pages (32x20.5cm), numbered 10-245, written on the front, in sheets. Complete manuscript of this naturalist novel, dedicated to Émile Zola. The novel bears the surtitle Les héros modernes. The manuscript, in black ink on laid paper, shows numerous erasures and corrections, with several blocks pasted over the original version. The title page is followed by the dedication page: "To my friend Emile Zola". The book was published at the end of 1883 by Charpentier. The novel is the story of an adulterer. In an article in the Gil Blas of November 27, 1883, "Les audacieux", Maupassant wrote that Hennique's novel "is a bold, ferociously true study of bourgeois adultery, as it is practiced every day. M. Hébert, a magistrate from Versailles, has a pretty young wife [...] So, one day during a review, Mme Hébert fell in love with a handsome staff captain, watching him tame a stubborn horse. She wrote to him and became his mistress. [...] Madame Hébert's adultery unfolds in the usual way. She loves without loving, gives herself without really knowing why, and then imagines that she is madly in love with her lover. Hennique has analyzed with singular penetration everything that goes on in the heart of a woman in the now so normal situation of a ménage à trois. He has been able to penetrate all the delicate and subtle sensations, the strange reasonings and naive ruses they have. [...] But what is particularly bold and true in this book are all the intimate details, the secret, shameful and grotesque details of tender liaisons. Unafraid of indignation, the novelist has dared to say it all, with a good faith that seems naïve. He washes love's dirty laundry for us. The unexpectedly simple denouement, with no machinations, no drama, no violent scenes, seems like a revelation"... One scene in the novel, which describes a miscarriage, shocked many. Zola wrote to Hennique on November 25, 1883: "Reading the whole volume made an enormous impression on me, far greater than the detached chapters you read to me. There is in it an originality that asserts itself, a very curious sense of human stupidity. Your adultery is a true imbecility that gives one the shivers. The conversations between lovers are especially astounding in their photographic cruelty. And I'm not talking about some of the pages of analysis, which are absolutely superior. Among the very good passages: all the rendezvous between your Madame Hébert and her captain, especially the one where she succumbs, with the accompaniment of the nearby exercise, of excellent comic effect; then, the great tableaux, the review, the fireworks, the dinner on the grass, and the miscarriage, and especially the last chapter, this so simple ending, of such great effect. Even the secondary characters are wonderfully planted, the officers, the magistrates, the stiff, black old mother. [...] You've made a superb comeback, you've brought us a work that is a fine response to all the vileness in the papers. As for me, I'm very proud of your dedication, and I thank you for putting my name on your front page, because it's a great honor to be there.