Jean COCTEAU (1889–1963).

A charming letter from her youth to the young actress Marie VENTURA (1888–1954). [Maisons-Laffitte]. “Dearest friend, you’re coming tomorrow, aren’t you? I’d be so, so happy. – I’ve had a box reserved in your name; you’ll just need to take it as you come in. I’m absolutely terrified!”… – “I’m in a right state; Rocher tells me you’re angry with me! But none of this is my fault, for the press releases were sent to the newspapers just as the posters were being printed, and I was only able to get your name removed from the programme and the recent blurbs”… – “I’ve just been very ill… it’s me; you see; I’m being punished! A terrible Heksineyithe or, to put it more plainly, a dreadful Chryséyphoïdite with a touch of cephalalgia. I get up, I watch the rain falling to distract myself from hearing it, and I think of little Ventura, who is, after all, my great weakness”… – “Bravo! Yesterday you were Watteau’s charming and mysterious Cilles, Verlaine’s sad and light poetry”… – “My old friend The Bear, seeing himself with a face he didn’t recognise, dared only a brief, bewildered nod. The Bear had a mad urge to pounce on you, to kiss you on both cheeks and tell you a whole lot of things. The Bear asks, on all fours, for a morning rendezvous”… [Paris 1912]. – “Can you come with me tomorrow evening to Salomé? It bores me to death with the others. Naturally, I have the best seat for you”… – “Being candid, what you meant by ‘I’m sending you’ only occurs to me now, and it causes me such embarrassment and such sadness that I cannot bring myself to write it to you. [...] The person in question is working and thinks of nothing else. Her gratitude towards me and my admiration for her are so familiar to me that I would never have thought of what they might give rise to, especially in you”… Etc.