A photograph of Mme de Lauris discovered by Marcel PROUST.

Marcel Proust (1871.1922)

Autograph letter signed to Georges de Lauris.

Four pages in-8°. Slnd [Cabourg, shortly before mid-August 1907]

Kolb, volume VII, page 251

Proust finally discovers, in a photograph, the face of the late Madame de Lauris.

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“My dear Georges, I thank you with all my heart for the sweet testimony of friendship that you gave me by lending me this photograph. Excuse my demand, I needed to see her alone, and the emotion she gave me and which exceeded everything I thought, I did not regret having deprived you of winning it with you . I easily recognized this pure forehead and this exquisite face where I so easily located all the dreams that I had formed around your mother.

And by bringing closer his eyes which watch over your good and watch over it, these vigilant eyes, this expression of the lower face so voluntary in the unwaveringly guarded gentleness, in the resignation to suffering and the entire devotion - of the face of your father that I I had so much joy seeing Houlgate, I easily found the genealogy and one after the other all the titles of your moral and physical intellectual nobility. I will not forget the kindness you showed me in showing me your father and even more so the portrait of your mother. Thank you very tenderly Marcel Proust. »