[Émile ZOLA (1840-1902)]. Henry DETOUCHE (1854-1913) painter, pastellist and engraver. L.A.S., Paris February 24, 1898, to Émile Zola; 2 pages in-8. The day after the author of J'accuse! was convicted of libel. "You are now consecrated. You continue the series of great French writers who have put their pen to the service of what they believed to be the truth, and provoked the manifestation of light": Courier, Béranger, Lamennais, Charles Hugo; "now you are French by right, for this recent persecution has made you the fellow-citizen of your illustrious predecessors in the realm of the act and the idea [...], there is one imprescriptible right in the writer, and that is to formulate, in the presence of the events he witnesses, the cry of his conscience"... A copy of a draft of Le Rêve is enclosed.

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