Should old love' letters be burnt? This is a question which the "Liberte" has been putting to a number of well-known people in Paris, and it publishes tonight some of the replies, writes the Paris correspondent of the "Morning Post" on October 22. "Mme. Alphonse Daudet, widow of. the great French novelist, points ouf that life is so ephemeral and its duration so doubtful that it may be better to leave nothing behind us and to let all disappear with us. '"Fumee sur fumes, reve sur reve. On the other hand, just because life is so short should we not preserve all.that may lend @ charm to it and contribute towards rendering it happier? She inclines to the latter point of view. 'Otherwise we should never have had the pleasure of reading the letters of an Epinasse, and, nearer to our own times, the admirable correspondence of Flaubert or Balzac in the Letters to 'L'Inconaue.'
M. Michel Corday, the brilliant contemporary author, prudently recalls that in the case of letters from a woman their preservation may risk exposing her to the anger of a jealous partner if she still lives, or to posthumous reprobation if she be dead. On the whole he votes in favour of total destruction of old love letters. To those who object that by so doing we may deprive posterity of many delightful moments he suggests that, if it is desired to preserve. passages worthy of it, such letters should be recopied without their signatures.
M. Henri Duvernois, the author of many charming stories, is much more positive in his reply. "Burn them without hesitation," he says, '"'in order to preserve a souvenir that will be all the more wonderful because it will be idealized through the impossibility of all control by reality. The most—beautiiful flower, when dried and pressed, loses all its perfume and its colour; and it is the same with a love letter when the love that inspired it has died. An old love letter is a pleasant souvenir, but it should be only a_ souvenir embellished and purified."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.