"Les Grands Chemins tu as raison, c'est un livre formidable. De plein air et de grand style. On peut toujours relire Giono... la vie passe entre les lignes et la poésie... merveilleux ! "

Manuscript letter dated and signed, 17 lines from Alphonse Boudard to his great friend and companion of well-lubricated lunches, the Brussels journalist André Tillieu who was, like Alphonse Boudard, a great friend of Georges Brassens but also of Louis Nucéra.
A crease mark inherent to folding the letter for mailing, envelope included.
"ami,
bien reçu "Le Peuple" et ton papelard sublime. Bravo ! Merci ! etc... dans un monticule de paperasses qui s'accumulent sur mon bureau, j'ai perdu la carte qur tu m'as envoyée avec l'adresse de la fille de Giono. Je la retrouverai, mais quand ? (Je suis plutôt bordelique question classement, rangement etc...) Pour ne pas perdre trop de temps sois chouette de me la renvoyer. A bientôt... ton pote ABoudard." ["friend, well received "Le Peuple" and your sublime piece of paper. Bravo! Thank you! etc... in a pile of paperwork accumulating on my desk, I lost the card you sent me with Giono's daughter's address. I'll find it, but when? (I'm rather messy when it comes to filing, organizing etc...) To not waste too much time, be a pal and send it back to me. See you soon... your buddy ABoudard."]
André Tillieu the Brusseler, 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 Parisian wisecracking 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 reviews 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 loved to share hearty well-lubricated meals and cycling excursions. As death gradually took away his best friends one by one, André Tillieu remained one of Alphonse's very last buddies.