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• 1 media/letter_thumbnail_generic.jpeg term 2016-12-16T22:44:32-08:00 Louis La Valliere to Voltaire - 1756 March 1 8 See a translation of this letter. plain 2017-10-03T10:53:52-07:00 48.8038949,2.101669; 46.2073129,6.1331316 1756 March 1
  Versailles, this 1st March 1756
  
  
  1             I have received, my dear Voltaire, the sermon that you sent to me
  2.            and, despite its prevailing sound philosophy, it has inspired in me
  3             even more respect for its author than for its morality.  One
  4             additional impact that it has had on me is my decision
  5             to ask you for the greatest mark of friendship that you
  6             could give me.  I acknowledge that you are almost sixty years old,
  7             I believe that you do not have the most robust of health, but
  8             I am sure that you have the finest intelligence and the most well-balanced mind;
  9             and, should you start a new career under
  10           the name of a young man aged fifteen years, and were he
  11           to live longer than Fontenelle, you would provide him with the wherewithal to
  12           become the most illustrious man of his century.  Hence, I do not fear
  13           to ask you to send to me psalms embellished with
  14           your poetic lines. You alone have been worthy, and are worthy of translating them;
  15           you would eclipse Rousseau, you would inspire edification, and you would
  16           provide me the opportunity to give the greatest pleasure to M^de \de Pompadour/.
  17           It is no longer Merope, Lully or Metastase that we need,
  18           but a little bit of David, imitate him, enrich him, I shall admire your
  10           work, and I shall not be jealous of it, provided that it is reserved for me,
  20           poor sinner, to surpass it with my Betzabée. I
  21           shall be happy, and you will add to my satisfaction by
  
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  22           granting me all that I ask of you with utmost entreaty.
  23           Grant me an hour a day, do not show them to anyone, and,
  24           shortly, I shall turn them into an edition published at the Louvre that will
  25           bring as much honor to the author as it will give pleasure to the public. I'll
  26           say it again: I am sure that she will be delighted by it, just as I would
  27           by knowing that, through you, I can make her so
  28           happy. I count on your friendship; you know that we go back
  29           a long time; so I await the beginnings of an assured success, soon to come,
  30           that I am preparing for you.  For this I do not dispense with
  31           the royal Merope, nor the vindication of my dear friend
  32           Jeane. I could not console myself that a jackass[1] had
  33           the honor to deflower her. I heard indeed that it is
  34           through pain that one attains pleasures, but through torture,
  35           this is truly excessive. Farewell my dear Voltaire, I await
  36           news from you with the greatest impatience; you are
  37           assured of my sincere friendship, as you can be of my
  38           real gratitude as well.
  
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                                                  A Monsieur
                                                 
                                                  Monsieur De Voltaire one of the
                                                  forty [members] of the Académie Française
   
                                                                                                                          Geneva
                                                              FROM VERSAILLES
   

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  [1] “Un âne”: “Fig. Homme sans intelligence, esprit fermé.” [“A man without intelligence, closed-minded”]  Dictionnaire de la langue française, par É. Littré. https://www.littre.org/definition/âne