GÉRICAULT Théodore (1791-1824).

L.A., Monday evening [early 1822 ?], to Mme TROUILLARD, rue de Choiseul n° 13 in Paris; 3 pages in-8, address (small lack by break of seal with loss of an end of line and small crack at the fold). Reproaches to his mistress about her conduct towards her maid. Let her not take offence at her friend's frankness, nor see in it a desire to criticize her actions, or a secret desire to bother her: "if I deal with this subject it is because of the grief I feel at knowing that she is once unjust, whom I have always seen as good, fair and sensitive. Your conduct with Cécile has caused me great pain, I assure you, and if I am not happy with you on this occasion I am quite sure that you yourself are not without some reproaches. Do you think that I am overstepping my rights in speaking to you in this way? Do you think that it is not the duty of a friend to show at least the one he loves the means of repairing a fault which vivacity may have caused him to commit? So I have come to try to give you the strength and courage to be what you should be, what I believed you to be, what I still believe you to be, human and just, would I love you as much if it were otherwise? Cecile can be negligent, I want to believe it, but will you find a more excellent creature, more discreet, more devoted [...] I do not believe you are easy to serve, between us"... Her friend suffers, that is her excuse, but Cécile too, "she must remain silent and can only devote to her health the little time that is not used for the care that yours requires: is it then a little more fortune, a little more happiness that makes you forget that we all have the same origin, that we will return equally to nothingness and that for such a short passage what reasonable excuse could we allege to refuse to others a little of that pity that we ourselves need so much. I dare not speak of your vivacity, I do not know how to describe it; but it certainly does you more harm than it does the unfortunate Cecile, your servant and confidante, who may have been very wronged by you before your violence could be justified. You forgot at that moment everything that makes up the charm of a woman, gentleness [...], and your own dignity by exposing yourself by your example [to] the loss of respect which is perhaps the only thing that can be justly demanded of a servant"... He wishes with all his heart that his friend would understand, and above all that this letter would reach him before she had pushed her project to the end. "Judge that if I seem delicate about the choice of your adjustments I am much more so about your way of being with those who love you or serve you"...