Victor de LAPRADE, Poet and Academician (Montbrison/LOIRE 18 - Lot 536

Victor de LAPRADE, Poet and Academician (Montbrison/LOIRE 1812 - 1883). 4 Autograph letters signed from LYON (69): 3 letters to the writer Aimé GIRON (1861,1868, 1872) and 1 Letter to Mr de VATRY, from 1876: "Lyon 27 Mars 1842. Dear Poet and Friend. I am going... barely able to walk beside my ready-made trunk to go to Versailles to try to sit... I have the sad certainty that I will be long in death, for deep down I have a remaining vitality, but what is already dead is the poet. It's the man of action and my title of Deputy is a pain... I'll tire of a mandate I'm incapable of fulfilling... Don't believe when you see something of me printed that I'm working. It's all old stuff, fished from the bottom of a drawer, for example À LAMARTINE, done three years ago. Since Napoleon III gave me the only real happiness I've ever had in my life when he deposed me. I've spent 8 to 10 years doing good work, and I have in my portfolio four to five volumes of prose and two or three of verse. My only ambition, my only hope... is to be able to liquidate this before I leave for the other world. I'm going to start with a volume on education entitled: De l'éducation libérale..." (excerpt)