"Ledit sujet est une petite juive de 18 ans, métissée de Mexicain avec une pointe d'origine Allemande. Le résultat de ces croisements invraisemblables est purement exquis."

Autograph letter signed by Victor Segalen addressed to Emile Mignard, eight pages written in black ink on two double sheets of white paper. Transverse creases inherent to mailing. Trace of white paper tab. A small stain in the lower margin of the last sheet.
Emile Mignard (1878-1966), also a doctor from Brest, was one of Segalen's closest childhood friends whom he met at the Jesuit college Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours in Brest. The writer maintained an abundant and sustained correspondence with this friend in which he described with humor and intimacy his daily life in the four corners of the globe. It was at Mignard's wedding on February 15, 1905, that Segalen met his wife, Yvonne Hébert.
Segalen, who left Le Havre on October 11, 1902, bound for Tahiti, saw his journey interrupted by contracting typhoid fever which ultimately immobilized him for two months in San Francisco. This convalescence, which lasted until early January 1903, gave Segalen the opportunity to discover Chinatown. At the time, he wrote this long letter to Mignard in which he shared premonitory dreams that mutual friends had about his illness: "I received 24 hours apart the following two accounts: from Max [Prat]: dreamed on the night of November 26-27 about me - saw me with my head wrapped in bandages. Nightmare and persistent unpleasant impression. Learned that very day through a card from my family, who had received the news on the evening of the 26th, of my illness. From Madame Varenne; dreamed obsessively about me from approximately December 1st to 4th. [...] On the 5th, I believe, she received notice of my typhoid incident." Very rationally, Segalen concludes: "All this just for the record, because it lacks rigor. The telepathic dreams would have coincided rather with the news of my illness than with the exacerbation of my fever itself."
Now completely recovered from his illness, the young doctor continues: "My Franciscan stay continues to be most 'comfortable' and complete. I ride horses in the Park, lift weights and swim at the Olympic club [...]" He also indulges in a much more carnal sport and "performs practical work on the person of an American subject, selected before [his] departure from the hospital among the very appetizing 'nurses'". Not sparing with details, he expands on this new conquest: "Said subject is a little 18-year-old Jewish girl, mixed with Mexican with a touch of German origin. The result of these improbable crossings is purely exquisite. [...] Average height, very supple, eyes and hair of an improbable black, very affectionate and very spirited. That's all. Nothing underneath, and in this heart clothed in such a pretty coat of flesh, an absolute void of our most elementary feelings. She's a complete mistress-companion type. Our embraces are necessarily polyglot: she spices our spasms with a Hebrew 'che t'aime' very prettily murmured. And I respond with words of love gleaned in the morning from Tennyson or from my memories. I have her at hand at the desired hours. She smokes enormously, adores pure seltzer water (!) and contorts herself at my Franco-American jokes and my audacious flights in the language of President Roosevelt."
Autograph letters by Victor Segalen are extremely rare.