"à bientôt j'espère à la table des vieux de la vieille..."

Manuscript letter dated and signed, 12 lines by Alphonse Boudard to his great friend and companion of boozy lunches, the Brussels journalist André Tillieu who was, like Alphonse Boudard, a great friend of Georges Brassens but also of Louis Nucéra.
Envelope included, a fold mark inherent to the letter being placed in the envelope.
"Vieux,
merci , grand merci... avec un peu de retard excuse-moi... pour ton article. Comme toujours c'est le meilleur, le + complet... celui qui va au fond des choses... et qui part du coeur ! à bientôt j'espère à la table des vieux de la vieille... Mon amitié. Aboudard."
André Tillieu from Brussels, very close friend and biographer of Georges Brassens, maintained an epistolary correspondence with Alphonse Boudard for almost thirty years, from 1972 until the latter's death in 2000.
The cheeky Parisian writer very quickly showed him his friendship, considering him as one of the rare critics to understand him perfectly to the point of clearly explaining in his chronicles what he himself expressed only incompletely and sometimes confusedly in his books.
André Tillieu thus became part of the small circle of Alphonse Boudard's true friends on the same level as le Gros Georges (Georges Brassens), le Niçois (Louis Nucéra) and René Fallet with whom he liked to share hearty well-watered meals and cycling trips. As death gradually took away his best friends one by one, André Tillieu would remain one of Alphonse's very last pals.