39 - LAMARQUE (Jean-Maximilien). Signed autograph letter to Dumoulin the Elder. Saint-Sever, April 29, 1819. 1½ pages, in-4 format, address on the back.

LAMARQUE (Jean-Maximilien). Signed autograph letter to Dumoulin the Elder. Saint-Sever, April 29, 1819. 1½ pages, in-4 format, address on the back. “Since I left Paris, I have had no news from you… and my friendship suffers as a result… I’m starting to get bored deep in my dreary province; nevertheless, I’m continuing the construction of a vast barracks here, which my fellow countrymen have given the grandiose name of ‘hotel’ and even ‘château.’ I’ll have room there to accommodate a few friends, and I very much hope to welcome you there one day and see you painting in a spacious studio that I’m setting up in a pavilion... Your *Clair de Lune* is in one of the rooms and looks marvelous... I READ *Le Constitutionnel*, *Le Libéral*, *La Minerve*, and *La Bibliothèque Historique* [liberal newspapers] REGULARLY, BUT I DON’T KNOW EVERYTHING THAT’S BEING SAID IN PARIS. So please write to me whenever you have a spare moment, and don’t hesitate to send me a long letter. [General Lamarque, whose banishment had been lifted, had returned to France and was taking an interest in politics: he would run for a seat in the National Assembly starting in 1820 and would be elected in 1828.] DO YOU OFTEN SEE THE KIND, CHARMING, BEAUTIFUL M[RS.] LAVOLEE? I suspect you have a little affection for her, and I forgive you for it. It’s impossible to be more charming. I sometimes receive very interesting letters from her husband...” Olivier Lavolée, who was Cambacérès’s private secretary and perhaps his lover, had married one of Cambacérès’s cousins, Rose Du Vidal de Montferrier.