Letters to Madame Viardot by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

The letters of the great Russian writer Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev to M me Pauline Viardot, the famous singer, have their story.
Lost or stolen, when the war of 1870 forced the Viardot family to leave Baden for London, these letters were found more than a quarter of a century later.
Naturally, Ms. Viardot wished to take possession of documents which she had never voluntarily divested, and to which she had all the moral and legal rights. On the other hand, the motives advanced by the present possessor to keep the letters were not without value either. He had found the precious package-among some unimportant papers-in a box he had bought from a Berlin bookstaller; he, in his turn, had acquired it from the widow of a French doctor, it seems; here, stop my investigation on the origin of the box.
Be that as it may, the last purchaser, a devoted admirer of Tourgueneff, made it his duty to preserve as a sacred deposit the correspondence which chance placed in his hands until the day when he could make it public, and he thought that this day could come only after the death of the recipient of the letters.
Since, in the end, the owner of the letters was less preoccupied with a pecuniary question than with the desire to surround this publication with better possible literary conditions, I end up persuading him of the real advantages that would be gained by living it. under the auspices of the famous artist.