Léon DAUDET (1867-1942) Autograph manuscript signed, Sébastien Gouvès, contemporary novel, 1898; 449 pages in-fol. in autograph title folder. Complete manuscript of this novel, published by Fasquelle in 1899. It "features a professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Montpellier who becomes head of a laboratory at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, thanks to the support of a Jew, Éphraïm Mercier. While Mercier tries to steal a discovery from him, his daughter, Marianne, becomes the mistress of an old magistrate... (F. Broche). Marcel Proust praised this "admirable book": "It seems to me that with each book you become more objective, which is the most sincere way of being subjective; for your thought faces all of nature at once, and to embody all your ideas is to describe nature". The manuscript is signed at the end and dated November 14, 1898; it is written in black ink on the front of the leaves, with erasures and corrections; it is paginated in blue pencil. The first page is dedicated to Paul Mariéton, "to the delicate and profound poet, to the visionary scholar, to the maintainer of the traditions and the language of Provence"...