GÉRICAULT Théodore (1791-1824).

L.A., [early 1822], to Mme TROUILLARD, rue Chantereine n° 10 in Paris; 3 pages in-8, address (slight wetness on one edge, small cracks due to broken seal). Nice gallant letter, the day after an evening at the lady's house. "I have said nothing, I believe, madam, that would cause you grief, so you really only have yourself to blame if you have noticed in my air something that disobliges you. I will not deny, however, that such things as produce a pleasant effect on some, and provoke laughter and merriment, do just the opposite on me, and would even drive me away from the place where they are often in play. For example, it will always be impossible for me, however much I may be blessed with the favours of a wife, to see the infirmities and the obsolescence of a husband ridiculed mercilessly, whose greatest fault will often be to have been too kind and too indulgent. Do not think that I ever want to set myself up as a reformer; that is not my business; I am simply explaining my behaviour of last night. After that, without wishing to make an apology for my feelings, which you will no doubt find quite bourgeois, I must declare that I will never change them, that before entering into a relationship it is important to know each other well, and that consequently I will tell you all my impressions as they arise, for I would regret later on to see that you had misunderstood. So I will never flatter you. If I were less interested in you, it would be easy for me to be more binding, for it is easy to overlook the failings of those whom one does not like and whom one has little need to esteem. Be assured that women will look for a long time before they find something that adorns them better than modesty and modesty, and that all the advantages of the spirit cannot raise the depravity of the heart"... He was not saddened by the arrival of M. Parceval, "but what I do not like at all are your relays of indulgers and this troop of suitors who besiege your doors and establish themselves with authority in your home, but as [...] I would be ashamed to take away a single favour from them, I willingly leave them the field free. All this noise does not suit me, and for you the habit if not the taste must have made it necessary"...