"Aujourd'hui, après une journée qui a déjà duré 11 h je n'ai fumé qu'un demi paquet de cigarettes."

Autograph card by Pierre Louÿs signed with his initial, addressed to Georges Louis and written in violet ink on both sides.
Note addressed to his brother Georges Louis with whom Pierre Louÿs maintained a very intimate relationship and whom he considered as his own father.
The question of Pierre Louÿs's real paternal identity still fascinates biographers today: "His father, Pierre Philippe Louis, [...] had married in 1842 Jeanne Constance Blanchin, who died ten years later after giving him two children, Lucie and Georges. In 1855, he remarried Claire Céline Maldan, and from this union was born, in 1857, a son, Paul; then, in 1870, our writer, who received the given names Pierre Félix. This late birth, the differences in character between father and son, the former's disaffection toward the latter, the profound intimacy that always reigned between Louÿs and his brother Georges, all this has led certain biographers and critics to suspect that the latter was in reality the writer's father. The exceptionally intimate and constant relationship that Pierre and Georges maintained between themselves throughout their lives, could be an argument in this direction. Of course, no irrefutable proof has been discovered, and probably never will be. Nevertheless, certain letters [...] are quite troubling. In 1895, for example, Louÿs writes seriously to his brother that he knows the answer to 'the most poignant question' he could ask him, a question he has had 'on his lips for ten years.' The following year, in the full triumph of Aphrodite, he thanks Georges effusively and ends his letter with this sentence: 'Not one of my friends has a FATHER who is for him what you are for me.' Arguing from the close intimacy of Georges and Claire Céline during the year 1870, and the jealousy that the father never ceased to show toward his younger son, Claude Farrère did not hesitate to conclude in favor of Georges Louis. And what to think of this dedication by Louÿs to his brother on a Japan paper copy of the first edition of Pausole: To Georges, his eldest son / Pierre." (Jean-Paul Goujon, Pierre Louÿs)
Pierre Louÿs revolutionizes his living conditions: "I am taking serious care of myself. For two days now I have been going to bed at half past midnight to wake up between 9 and 10. Today, after a day that has already lasted 11 hours I have only smoked half a pack of cigarettes. That's a quarter of my usual consumption during the same time. Moreover I walked more than a league on foot, I took the air as much as I could...Well with all that I feel quite unwell, or rather as if I were the day after a long and serious illness. Neither strength nor nerves. I have trouble listening, speaking, following an idea. Should this be attributed to my cigarette rationing? It's possible. But honestly I don't think I have felt so low since '97, since the month when you came to see me in Algiers."
Amusing note from the most tobacco-addicted of writers (nearly 60 cigarettes per day...!) who wrote in Une volupté nouvelle: "One night, as I found myself there, in silent conversation with two blue porcelain cats crouched on a white table, I hesitated to choose between two pastimes of solitude: write a regular sonnet while smoking cigarettes, or smoke cigarettes while looking at the ceiling carpet. The important thing is to always have a cigarette in hand; one must envelop objects in a celestial and fine cloud that bathes lights and shadows, erases material angles, and, by a perfumed spell, imposes on the agitated mind a variable balance from which it can fall into reverie."