"je t'écrirai demain, pour te redire que je t'aime"

Probably unpublished autograph letter signed by Alexandre Dumas to his lover Marie Richon. 13 lines on two pages of a bifolium. Usual trace of horizontal fold.

"My darling love
Do you think of me
Won't you save your evening for me tomorrow [...] we'll go to the show in any case come as an Arlaisienne [sic].
I'll write to you tomorrow, to tell you again that I love you.
My daughter could not have been more touched by your outburst towards her.
She adores you - or rather, we adore you.
Love me."



Nothing is known of this affair with Marie Richon except through a few of Dumas' very impassioned letters. She was obviously sensitive to belles-lettres ("Make me some good verses for my return", he asked her in antoher letter). Whether she was an actress, a woman of the world or a scholar, the mystery surrounding this character, who inspired a torrid correspondence, remains unsolved. In particular, he would meet his mysterious conquest at his home on Boulevard Haussmann, where he had settled from 1865 onwards. One of Dumas's sentences tells us that she even met Dumas's daughter, who lived with her father and endured visits from his lovers (" My daughter could not have been more touched by your outburst towards her. She adores you - or rather, we adore you "). We can place this missive probably in the course of 1866, during the preparations for the theatrical adaptation of his novel 'Gabriel Lambert' - he mentions in another letter a reading of the play at the Ambigu-Comique, where it premiered on March 16, 1866. The last years of Dumas' life did not quench his immeasurable love of women; during this adventurous period, he also shared his nights with the feminist and gerontophile Olympe Audouard, as well as the famous Adah Isaacs Menken, whose portraits at the writer's side were leaked by their indiscreet photographer.

Aesthetic and overflowing declaration of love from the great writer, addressed to a mysterious lover still unknown to biographers.