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Guy de MAUPASSANT

Manuscrit autographe à la Comtesse Potocka : « Vous prenez un chien enragé que vous faites manger par un lapin; vous faites ensuite dévorer ce lapin par un mouton »

s.l. s.d. [juillet-août 1885], 9,6x15,5cm, une feuille.

Autograph manuscript by Guy de Maupassant to Countess Potocka, 36 lines in ink on one page. Horizontal fold at center. Published in Philippe Dahhan, "Guy de Maupassant et les femmes : essai", Bertout, 1996.
Unusual manuscript by Maupassant, giving a false rabies vaccine formula he calls "Élixir Pasteur", made with namely "seven tears of a rejected academic candidate", "five drops of journalist's drool" and "one centimeter of novelist's pride".
This amusing prescription is addressed to Countess Potocka, a wealthy aristocratic socialite and intellectual whose beauty and fickle personality greatly inspired feminine Maupassant characters: Christiane Andermatt in Mont-Oriol and Michèle de Burne in Notre cœur [Our Heart].
Maupassant writes to Emmanuela Pignatelli di Cergharia, wife of the extremely rich Polish count Nicolas Potocki, who allowed her a great deal of freedom. Her Parisian salon in the avenue Friedland was, from 1882 onwards, the exclusive meeting place for an elite composed of writers, socialites and literary types. It hosted each Friday a council of suitors "dying of love" ironically nicknamed the "Maccabees" in reference to the seven martyred brothers of the Bible. Visitors included Guerlain, who made a perfume for her called Shore's caprice and composer Camille Saint-Saëns who wrote a mazurka for her, artist Léon Bonnart who painted her portrait, as well as young Marcel Proust who wrote a Figaro column about her renowned gathering. She remained Maupassant's greatest conquest and muse, whom he courted until the end of his life.
The author gives the Countess an unlikely recipe for Elixir Pasteur, inspired by Louis Pasteur's rabies experiments using rabbit marrow. The undated autograph manuscript was probably written in July-August 1885, when Pasteur successfully administered his rabies vaccine to nine-year-old Joseph Meister. Maupassant deploys his talents for farce and parody, twisting medical jargon to create a fake vaccine: "So this last animal receives the rabies virus at its seventh potency and instantly goes into a rage. You then remove its left eye and extract the visual fluid with a morphine syringe. You put this fluid in a small granite jar with five drops of journalist's slime". Diagnosed with syphilis some ten years earlier, Maupassant was in fact particularly familiar with remedies and potions. He was a frequent visitor to spa towns and consulted numerous doctors before his internment at Doctor Blanche's clinic, where he died of general paralysis on July 6, 1893. This humorous note to Countess Potocka is one of his countless seduction attempts. He remained an eternally thwarted lover despite having written numerous manuscripts for her, composed poems written on fans, and visited her almost daily during his stays in Paris. Their correspondence went on for many years, with Maupassant going so far as to create the "Société Anonyme Anti-Soporifique pour la Récréation perpétuelle de la Comtesse Potocka", with the sole aim of entertaining the Countess and escaping her indifference: "Realizing that my efforts are often fruitless in the face of your deliberate indifference, I've tried to find a way to overcome your boredom on every occasion" (Letter, August 1885, The Morgan Library, New York).
Maupassant ends his note with an amusing remark, proving the effectiveness of his remedy against rabies: "It is by this method that all accidents were avoided during the last Congress", in reference to the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 also known as the Congo Conference, where the colonial partitioning of Africa was decided.
Provenance: Jean Bonna collection.

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