Autograph manuscript signed.
8vo. 2½ pp. on 3 ff. With autograph pagination and mounted lithographed title label "Sergots".
€ 180.00
A satirical character study describing the type of a city sergeant or gendarme (as reflected in the colloquial term "Sergot" used before the War): "Régulier et assidu à travers les rues, les avenues, les boulevards, il erre comme une âme en peine. A quoi rêve-t-il? Ah! qui le sait? [...] Il faut plaindre infiniment le sergot, car il s'ennuie. Son ennui peut aller jusqu'à la plus intense exaspération. Et s'il n'avait pour apaiser ses nerfs souffrants quelques contribuables, de temps en temps, à passer à tabac, il mourrait. Il mourrait en maudissant les circonstances fortuites par lesquelles il s'est vu séparer, un beau jour, de cette humanité normale qui vit humblement, crie: 'Mort aux vaches!' et se fait arrêter [...]" ("Regular and assiduous throughout the streets, avenues, boulevards, he wanders, a troubled soul. Of what is he dreaming? Ah! who knows? [...] The sergot is to be pitied infinitely, for he is bored. His boredom can even take the form of the most intense exasperation. And had he not a few taxpayers to beat up, to ease his ailing nerves from time to time, he would die. He would die cursing the arbitrary circumstances by which he saw himself separated, one fine day, from normal humankind which lives humbly, cries: 'Death to Pigs', and gets arrested [...]").
Some marginal defects and slight browning.
