Le feu follet

First edition, one of 647 numbered copies on pur fil, the only large paper copies after 109 reimposed.

Contemporary half green morocco, spine with five raised bands, date in gilt at foot, patterned paper boards, green paper endpapers and pastedowns, original wrappers and sunned spine preserved, top edge gilt, binding by Thomas Boichot.

Fine presentation inscription signed by Pierre Drieu la Rochelle to a pair of very close friends: "A Guillaume [et] Marcelle de Tarde ce Feu Follet qui en s'évanouissant emporte ma jeunesse votre amitié m'est précieuse et m'a fait beaucoup de bien \ Drieu." [To Guillaume and Marcelle de Tarde, this Will o' the Wisp which in vanishing carries away my youth, your friendship is precious to me and has done me much good].

It is highly likely that this presentation inscription was written not in 1931, but at the beginning of the Second World War, during Drieu La Rochelle's stay with the Tardes in 1940. In June of that year, he was welcomed by the couple at the Hôtel de la Belle-Etoile in Dordogne. There he regularly took long walks, during which he may well have glimpsed will-o'-the-wisps. As Marc Lambron reports, Guillaume de Tarde, mayor of La Roque-Gageac and his host, struck him as "healthy, jovial, long-winded, too verbose, tedious through ignorance of concision." His wife, however, Marcelle de Tarde, "whom he had already been in love with, whom he had attempted to win over, who had resisted him [...] Perhaps the only one," as Pierre Andreu and Frédéric Grover inform us, proved the most agreeable company. A platonic romance developed during this stay:

"Drieu's intimates nicknamed this virtuous woman 'La Présidente' in memory of Madame de Tourvel, who had resisted Valmont for so long in Dangerous Liaisons. They shelled peas together on the terrace of the château, and little by little, Drieu felt himself falling for her again." 

Drieu La Rochelle, Pierre Andreu et Frédéric Grover, 1989 (translation of our own)

It was also during this interlude, in the very first months of the German occupation, that Drieu La Rochelle completed his novel Rêveuse Bourgeoisie.

First edition of Drieu's masterpiece, enriched with a moving presentation inscription from the author to Guillaume de Tarde and his wife Marcelle, for whom he harboured lasting feelings throughout his life.