CHATEAUBRIAND (François René, vicomte de). Set of 2 beautiful autograph letters, both literary and intimate, addressed to his friend the duchess of DURAS (whom he called his "sister") written while he was completing the Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem : - sl, "Thursday 8" [November 1810], 3 pp. small in-4: "You will have no reason to be jealous. I will not go to Paris until December 1 and maybe even later. I do not see anyone. I don't come out of my retreat. I work from morning to night because I want to finish in order to give all my time to my sister this winter and to arrange my future. This is a great and true farewell to the muse and perhaps to my country. But let us not grieve in advance and especially hope. I don't talk in my letters? That's all I do. I chatter so much that it's scary. My sister does not have a good memory. I have already told her that the news [The Adventures of the Last Abnerage] would not be in the Itinerary. There will only be reasonable things in this one, not great follies. You will do very well to come to Paris. One does not live when one is afraid of everything. And then, is it quite sure that the characters who engage you to retire have no other motives than your dangers? I have become ridiculously distrustful and I always believe that they want to deceive me. It is midnight. I am overwhelmed with work and my hand is so tired that I can hardly hold my pen. I hear the wind moaning in my little solitude where I watch alone with the memory of my sister. I wish her all kinds of happiness and I lay at her feet my tender and respectful friendship. [...]" - Vallée, "this Monday" [November 26, 1810], 2 pp. small in-4 (+ address on the 4th page): "I can only say one word to my sister. I am in the last moments of my work. I will have finished everything next Saturday. Then my head is turned upside down by these [decennial] prizes that are being talked about again. I don't know what will become of it." He worries about the uncertainty of the duchess's return to Paris. "I only guessed at your friends' ideas because that is the way men are made. One must be good and duped in the world, but one must know that one is being deceived, otherwise it is pure foolishness. I like people very much, I esteem almost nobody. Forgive me, dear sister, you will say again that I don't talk. But you must have pity on me, I am overwhelmed with work. Thank God this will end and I hope for life. From now on I will not print anything in my lifetime unless I change [...]". Claire de Duras, born de Coëtnempren de Kersaint (1777-1828) emigrated to the United States and then to London, where she married Amédée-Bretagne-Malo de Durfort, the future Duke of Duras, in 1797. She returned to France in 1800, mother of two children, and met Chateaubriand in the salon of Nathalie de Noailles, who was then the writer's mistress. Very sincerely and deeply attached to this man she admired, the Duchess of Duras became one of his most faithful correspondents and a devoted friend (if not a lover), using her influence to favor his political and diplomatic career. She was one of those "Madames" as Mme de Chateaubriand called them, with whom her husband liked to surround himself. Dividing her time between her castle of Ussé and her Parisian hotel, rue de Varenne, she received the greatest literary and political personalities, while publishing herself sentimental novels precursors of feminist issues.