Gosselin LENOTRE (1857-1935). Autograph manuscript signed, L - Lot 104

Gosselin LENOTRE (1857-1935). Autograph manuscript signed, La Brouette de Couthon; 8 fol. pages with erasures and corrections (erasures at bottom of one page). Interesting study of Georges Couthon, on the occasion of the donation of his wheelchair to the Musée Carnavalet. Lenotre captures the portrait of "this debris of a man", carried by his machine through the crowd, "stunned, bewildered by the contrast between the pitiful appearance of this cripple and the terror inspired by his name, more feared perhaps than that of Robespierre"... He recounts the drama of the 9th Thermidor, then the execution of the 22 condemned men on the Place de la Révolution, and the measures taken to bind Couthon to the guillotine: "the trials lasted a quarter of an hour! a quarter of an hour of terrible agony, during which the pain tore from the supplicate heart-rending cries, the plaintive echo of which the crowd muffled under its fanatical vociferations!"... He then traces Couthon's family lineage: the two sons, one of whom was swept away in the revolutionary turmoil and the other, Antonin, faithful to his father's memory, experienced the ups and downs of this heavy inheritance all his life; the grandson, who died of cholera in Italy; the two great-granddaughters, one of whom has just presented the City of Paris with this wheelchair that Couthon "moved by means of two cranks adapted to the end of each arm", a historical piece of furniture whose undeniable authenticity Lenotre demonstrates... The manuscript is dedicated at the end to Georges Cain.