"Réglons-nous sur Sarah ! "

Autograph letter signed by the dandy count, three pages (27 lines), written in black ink to his friends the Lapauzes that he is delighted to see them again soon even if they impose upon him the presence of a certain Sarah who is not among the people the poet seems to appreciate: "Dear friends, I will not do you the affront of not telling you that I would have preferred just the two of you, alone," (words underlined) but, as the beautiful verse says: You do what you do / What you do is right."
For this meeting arranged at the Petit Palais (of which Henry Lapauze becomes curator in 1905 after having been assistant director for the four preceding years), Robert de Montesquiou, "a late riser, who has the cowardice - or, if you prefer, the wisdom to choose the afternoon" timidly expresses, in a surge of wounded pride and revenge that he already regrets, the possibility of his absence: "...only a throat irritation, carelessly treated, and unexpectedly, could keep me away at the last moment... But I don't want to believe it. Let us arrange ourselves around Sarah!"
Henry Lapauze (1867-1925) was a journalist, art critic, then, in 1905, curator of the Petit Palais converted four years earlier into a museum and whose collections he considerably enriched by acquiring notably the Courbet, Henner, Falguière collections with, at the twilight of his life, a marked predilection for the Decorative Arts of which he was one of the ardent promoters.