"dans mon vieux castel d'Hernani Gascon"

Autograph letter signed by Robert de Montesquiou, three pages on three leaves with the letterhead of the Hôtel-Restaurant Garnier-Perroncel in Paris. Usual fold marks, with a small tear in the margins of all three leaves, not affecting the text.

The dandy Robert de Montesquiou prepares to host a gathering at his château of Courtanvaux, once the residence of famous knight D’Artagnan.

"Dear friend, I am delighted at the thought of welcoming and celebrating you at my old Gascon Castel of Hernani, at once humble and so proud!..

“I rekindle the fire, reopen the casements, have the weeds pulled from the cobblestones of the courtyard…”

For all this, I am bringing things forward by a day, and will likely come to speak to you about it, in your own Gascon, on Thursday instead of Friday. Would you kindly leave [it] at the front desk, in the name of Mr Robert Lecomte? I shall have it collected in the morning, so that, should these changes not suit you, you might let me know accordingly.

[...]

 

P.S. Perhaps the troublesome guest, knowing of the friendship uniting us with the Master, will think to ask you whether I am invited. In which case, you might reply (all the more easily as it is not entirely untrue…) that arrangements were, in part, made for me and by me…

if the answer led him to look inward and he could dwell there to the point of not emerging again before the 14th, your design might come to fruition.

..

(I hope our friend received, before his departure, the handsome volume I was pleased to offer him in the name of the dedicatee, a gift that—by publishing and even proclaiming—he shall return to him.)"