Good Alphonse,
Lets us consider like gentlemen and accountants what is to be done with your brother Charles. Two hundred francs to dress a woman in the finest crinoline! A woman, however fine her personal qualities–taken in dancing parade from a brothel!
Our cafe oleo last afternoon has enlightened me considerably as to your brother’s current careen into the abyss. In the army, I have seen every sort of dissipation and twist of selfhood into ruination; those men had better cause than our Charles, and I have shot several of them for less glaring outrages. I have developed a plan of attack…. But I must see you again, face to face; we must pour over the sores in his soul and unearth the charitable being who once, in his long uncut hair at ten years of age, would totter over to my lounge chair, with his mother on my lap, to deliver, carefully and unspillingly, the Spanish scotch that was discovered closest to Cordova’s corpse on that harrowing campaign among those dark and savage people who value independence over civilization.
Tell Charles nothing of any of this! You have always been so apt at straightening out his young poetic ass, that I beg you not to fail or lose nerve when I disclose my plan to you tomorrow…. Say threeish at The Victorie?
Yours cordially,
Pierre Aupick, Academy Militaire
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