Chacun treize à la douzaine

First edition, one of 144 numbered copies on laid paper, the only issue after 12 Japan.
Half red morocco binding with corners, spine with four raised bands, marbled paper boards, endpapers and pastedowns, covers and spine preserved, top edge gilt, binding signed Lucie Weill.
A handsomely bound copy.
Foxing affecting mainly the edges.
Frontispiece, work illustrated by Don with a portrait of Tristan Bernard.
Autograph inscription signed by Tristan Bernard to his friend Carlo Rim: "A Carlo Rim je dédie ces purs accents d'une âme poétique." ["To Carlo Rim I dedicate these pure accents of a poetic soul."]
We include an invitation card from Jacques Duhamel, Minister of Cultural Affairs, for the erection of the bust of Tristan Bernard on Place Tristan Bernard aux Ternes in Paris on Thursday May 18, 1972 at 11 a.m.
We include a press article by Carlo Rim about this cultural event.
During the Occupation, Tristan Bernard took refuge in Cannes and resided at the Windsor Hotel while his friend Carlo Rim offered him in vain to stay at his home so that he would be safe from denunciation or arrest; to which Tristan Bernard, never short of witticisms, replied: « À mon âge, on ne découche plus ! » ["At my age, one no longer sleeps away from home!"] adding: « Savez-vous que je figure dans le Petit Larousse ? On n'arrête pas quelqu'un qui figure dans le Petit Larousse » ["Do you know that I appear in the Petit Larousse? One doesn't arrest someone who appears in the Petit Larousse"]
He was nevertheless arrested in September 1943 as a Jew and interned with his wife at Drancy then released following intervention by Sacha Guitry and Arletty the following month.
His grandson François-René was also arrested as a resistance fighter and deported to Mauthausen where he died.
Provenance: from the library of the Provençal writer, caricaturist and filmmaker Carlo Rim who was notably the friend of Fernandel, Raimu and Marcel Pagnol but also of André Salmon and Max Jacob.