Letter to a friend

 

   You would be doing me a great kindness if you do not have the verses and your evaluation sent up (have them left with my concierge) so that the door-bell doesn't wake me up. If you have Milsand absolutely to hand you could include that as well but in the end I don't think I really need it. To verify some quotations I would need to have L'Éducation sentimentale, Germinie Lacerteux, (preferably the whole thing) for an hour and Montégut's study of George Eliot (you don't have to have Scenes of Clerical Life by G. Eliot). But for all that the simplest thing would be for you to come and see me yourself at about 3 o'clock (but ask the concierge if I am up because I might have taken trional) and then you can take your books back with you. And so you don't lose your books please would you put the quotation in an envelope for me. In L'Éducation it's at the beginning when he gives a louis as an offering on behalf of Mme Arnoux. In Germinie it is the phrase at the end in the cemetery about the dead in unmarked graves and in whose names we pray for small mercies. Montégut is too drawn out to explain to you.
   A thousand thanks,

   Marcel Proust.

No date or address and sent to an unknown recipient. See http://www.museedeslettres.fr/public/

 


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