"Aussitôt que j'ai été arrivé à Tours, j'ai été lancé sur les côtes de la Bretagne par l'envie la mieux conditionnée qui jamais ait empoigné un homme de fermer l'atmosphère de Paris et ses idées en allant courir sur les beaux rochers qui bordent la mer en Bretagne et là, parvenu, y suis resté quinze notables jours, les plus délicieux du monde, courant sur les baies, sur les goémons, ramassant des pucelages qui sont en grand nombre sur le sable marin, au rebours de la rue Vivienne."

Unpublished autograph letter: “As soon as I had arrived in Tours,
I was thrown on the coasts of Brittany by the best conditioned desire
that had ever seized a man to shut off the atmosphere of Paris and its
ideas by going to run on the beautiful rocks that border the sea in Brittany”
Unpublished handwritten letter signed by Honoré de Balzac, one and a half pages written in black ink on a leaf of white paper.
Transversal folds and ink a little faded at the bottom of the first page, without making it difficult to read.

The man from Tours poetically recounts his wanderings on the Breton coast during a trip he took in the company of Madame de Berny. Together, they sailed up the Loire in a boat all the way to Le Croisic: “As soon as I had arrived in Tours, I was thrown on the coasts of Brittany by the best conditioned desire that had ever seized a man to shut off the atmosphere of Paris and its ideas by going to run on the beautiful rocks that border the sea in Brittany and there, once arrived, I stayed a fortnight, the most delicious in the
world, running on the bays, on the kelp, collecting the pucelages that are in large numbers on the sea sand, in reverse of the rue Vivienne.” The “pucelages” here are shellfish, so named because of their vulvoid shape, allowing Balzac an allusion to the prostitution – very popular at the time – that occupied the Galerie Vivienne.

This amusing letter is addressed to one of the editors of La Silhouette magazine, as evidenced in particular by the sign off at the end of the letter, mentioning the founder of the periodical: “A thousand good friendships do not forget to give a large part to our friend [Victor] Ratier.” Balzac also mentions several articles: “I am writing to give you a sign of life, proof of interest and of friendship, but I write to you briefly because I have twenty letters to answer, and I promise you a letter for...1st July which will contain, the end of the charlatan issue 2 la bella dona and, finally, the articles that will have passed through my head and with which you will be furnished so as to not ask anything of me for a month or two and so that around August you will be my publisher.”
We have not found any trace of said letter in the writer's correspondence, no more besides than the continuation of the Charlatan (the first part of which was published in the second issue of La Silhouette). No article under the title of “Bella Dona” appears in the following issues either, although Balzac emphasizes in his letter the desire to provide other texts, “given that the charms of the Loire must not make [him] forget that [he is] the poorest of those who live on a quill pen.”

A beautiful and spicy unpublished letter.