Léon DAUDET (1867-1942) Autograph manuscript signed, Le Coeur et l'Absence, wartime novel, 1917; [1]-210 fol. pages in autograph folder. Complete manuscript of this novel, published by Flammarion in 1917. It tells the story of a woman whose officer husband has disappeared, and who becomes the mistress of a fashionable doctor. The husband, who was a prisoner, returns with a vengeance... The eight chapters are dated from March 1915 to May 1916. Léon Daudet dedicated this novel to his wife: "ma chère et bienfaisante Pampille, lumière de ma vie et de mes travaux" ("my dear and beneficent Pampille, light of my life and my work"). The manuscript, signed and dated at the end "avril 1917", in a folder with an autograph title, is complete; it contains erasures and corrections, and is preceded by the dedication leaf.