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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 160.: Letter to Mme Cheuvreux - The Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat. Vol. 1: The Man and the Statesman: The Correspondence and Articles on Politics

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Subject Area: Economics
Subject Area: Political Theory
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160.: Letter to Mme Cheuvreux - Frédéric Bastiat, The Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat. Vol. 1: The Man and the Statesman: The Correspondence and Articles on Politics [2011]

Edition used:

The Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat. Vol. 1: The Man and the Statesman: The Correspondence and Articles on Politics, translated from the French by Jane and Michel Willems, with an introduction by Jacques de Guenin and Jean-Claude Paul-Dejean. Annotations and Glossaries by Jacques de Guenin, Jean-Claude Paul-Dejean, and David M. Hart. Translation editor Dennis O’Keeffe (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2011).

Part of: The Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat, in 6 Vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


160.

Letter to Mme Cheuvreux

[Lettres d’un habitant des Landes, p. 57]

Madam,

I have just met Commander Matta,309 who claims that people will be ill tomorrow at the Hôtel Saint-Georges. I hope he is as bad a prophet as he is a brave soldier! Please be good enough to let me have the true state of affairs. You will not allow me to mention health without giving some news of mine. I am better and Charruau,310 like Sganarelle,311 declares that I must be cured. However, yesterday evening, a fatiguing coughing fit revealed the red symptom that is as terrifying in physiology as it is in politics.312 In spite of this, I would still be strong enough to take on whatever is left of your Louisette’s cough if that were possible, but affection cannot do this miracle; this is one harmony that this world is lacking.

Farewell, madam,

F. Bastiat

[309 ]An army medical officer.

[310 ]A physician.

[311 ]One of Molière’s characters, borrowed from the Commedia dell’arte. He appears in particular in Le Médecin malgré lui.

[312 ]Another reference to the fatal illness that would eventually kill Bastiat.