MAURIAC (François). The imitation of the executioners of Jes - Lot 112

MAURIAC (François). The imitation of the executioners of Jesus Christ. Paris, at the expense of Raymond Gid, 1954, in-12, br. cover printed. ORIGINAL EDITION. One of 500 numbered copies (n°341). With a long handwritten exchange between the 2 writers : François Mauriac and Marcel Jouhandeau. "Thank you, dear Jouhandeau, for the two books I am going to read, the one that deals with moral life especially with passionate attention and forgive me for appearing indiscreet, if there is one truth that I know, in the seventieth year of my age, it is that no one converts anyone : one sometimes finds oneself at the right moment to give a help, a last cut of shoulder. But everything is always the work of love, dear friend, I tell you, do not trust these sluggish times. I will never forget Henry Bordeaux coming back from visiting the brothers of St. John of God, Paul Bourget in his last illness. Do you know what he whispered in my ear?" Bordeaux asked me, he said (already having death in his teeth) "Eroticism never ends!"I laughed (for I am light-hearted) at this message from Bourget to Bordeaux, but it has haunted me ever since, and I know that it is true and that it is not too much of the sacramental life, that is to say, of intimacy with the Lord, of his tender forgiveness of the slightest weakness, to hope to end up like the old man Simeon, clasping the little child, "the eternal childhood of God", to our hearts. O my love of the evening, love of the evening of my life... this is a prayer of St. Gertrude. To my dear Jouhandeau, I will speak to you one day about Jean my brother who died a martyr, I pray to him for you1 since you loved him and remember him" and Marcel Jouhandeau's reply "it seems to me that there is a mistake in the dedication, an impropriety. Bourget must not have used the word eroticism, but the word concupiscence. Every time I have reported this anecdote, I have said concupiscence only dies with us. Eroticism is a matter of the intelligence, concupiscence of the flesh.