Une page d’histoire
Frontispiece and one plate by L. Ostrowski, engraved by Courboin.
One of [20] copies on China paper, not indicated in the justification; this copy is signed by Barbey d'Aurevilly in red ink.
Barbey d’Aurevilly here revives the memory of Julien and Marguerite de Ravalet, two of the eleven children of Jean III de Ravalet, seigneur de Tourlaville. In 1600, Marguerite was married to Jean Lefevre de Haupitois, thirty-two years her senior, a union she dared to renounce three years later, fleeing to join her brother. At the request of the outraged husband, they were arrested on 8 September 1603 and tried for adultery and incest. They denied the charges, but were condemned to beheading and executed on 2 December 1603, at the Place de Grève in Paris. These “beaux Incestueux de Tourlaville” are depicted in Ostrowski’s engraving: “[…] two swans [that] swam upon this lake where they alone were, not apart from one another, but pressed, huddled against each other as though they had been brother and sister, trembling upon this trembling water. They might have suggested the two souls of the last Ravalets, gone and returned in this charming form; but they were too white to be the souls of the guilty brother and sister. To believe it, they would have had to be black, and their proud necks bloodied.”
A very fine copy, in perfect condition.
Provenance: Raymond Claude-Lafontaine (for whom the copy was bound by Marius Michel, with his gilt bookplate at the foot of the front doublure) (Paris, 1923, no. 169); Laurent Meeûs; Charles Hayoit (II, 2001, no. 194); Pierre Collin (II, 2022, no. 56).