BLOY Léon (1846 - 1917) L.A.S. "Léon Bloy", Paris February 28, 1888, to Maurice de FLEURY; 2 pages in-8. Pathetic letter from Le Mendiant ingrat, superbly calligraphed. He got his address from HUYSMANS. His soul is "sad & weary usque ad mortem", but he rejoices and will pray for Maurice and his fiancée... "I have known a time, already long ago, of arms on the cross & holy tears & pure life, when I would have had more confidence in talking to God. I lived then in a perpetual hurricane of Joy & the world appeared around me, in the fog, only as a perpetual argument of sobs and obsessions. I had at my side, to envelop & enclose me in the intoxications of the Eucharist, an unheard-of being whose memory I profaned by trying to paint him with the earthy pigments of literature [allusion to La Femme pauvre]. I wasn't, as I am now, riddled with appalling sorrows, harassed, hounded, cornered on the most fragile partition of my free will by the barking desires of a Justice whose raging need will eventually turn into madness in me. I was poor - God knows! - even more so than today, so destitute as to repel Job's dung and discourage his vermin, I assumed the scarcity of space. But I didn't suffer for it in my soul, barely having the slightest inkling of sensible realities & not yet understanding the frightening symbolic Decree of the distribution of earthly goods, by virtue of which the appointed stewards of divine Divine Compassion depart, always, empty-handed & bitter-hearted, under inexplicable skies. I am therefore nothing of what I was, years ago, when, in my prayer, I presumed with the audacity of the simple, the formidable complicity of an army of chosen ones. [...] I am not one of those who believe in the vanity of suffering, especially when one suffers for great things & when one suffers exorbitantly!