DUMAS père (Alexandre). Autograph manuscript signed "Le Comité de l'Italie unitaire de Sicile". [Circa April 1861]. One p. 1/2 large folio; a few stains, trace of rusty paper clip. MAGNIFICENT LETTER ON HIS AND VICTOR HUGO'S COMMITMENT TO ITALIAN UNITY, AND MORE GENERALLY ON THEIR REPUBLICAN CONVICTIONS. "There is in Sicily a Committee for a united Italy, which is a good precaution taken at a time when so many people are doing what they can to disjoin Italy. As we are not among the latter, the committee has done us the honor of associating us with its work, a great honor which we appreciate from the bottom of our soul, and which we appreciate all the more as Naples does not spoil us in terms of courtesy and fraternity. But what gives me the greatest pleasure is that, by the same decision, Victor Hugo has been appointed a member of the same committee, and that our two names are fraternally attached to each other. It's been thirty-two years since these two names rubbed shoulders in literature, and fifteen years since they touched in politics, Victor Hugo having gradually arrived at convictions that I had held all my life. This is because Hugo's father was an imperialist and his mother a Vendéen, while my father was a republican. It has to be said that VICTOR HUGO MOVED SO FAR AHEAD OF ME - LESS REPUBLICAN THAN I WAS IN 1848, HE IS MORE REPUBLICAN THAN I AM TODAY. Today, Hugo wants a republican, unitary Italy. I'm content to want it to be unitary and constitutional. But WHAT WE WANT ABOVE ALL, INVINCIBLY, INVARIABLY, IS FOR PROGRESS TO GO AROUND THE WORLD, FOR DESPOTISM TO DISAPPEAR FROM THE EARTH, FOR PEOPLES TO FORM A FAMILY, FRATERNAL AND FREE..."