Collini begins by saying that he is angry that Dupont did not get the post he wanted (which was instead given to Jean-Joseph Barth on 3 January 1755), especially after Voltaire wrote in favour of him. He adds that, in this instance, bad prose won over verse, quoting the only two lines of an epistle by Voltaire to d’Argenson to survive: ‘Rendez, rendez heureux l’avocat qui m’engage / Donnez-lui les grandeurs d’un Prévôt de village’.

This is a letter to Derrey de Roqueville, who was a lawyer to the Parliament of Toulouse. A note beneath the letter explains that Roqueville had made a plea for a man named Louis Dussot, ‘the father of a large and poor family’. Louis Dussot wanted to claim part of a large inheritance which his brother had bequeathed to the Hospital of Montpellier. In the body of the letter Voltaire praises Roqueville’s eloquence, and offers his opinions on the Louis Dussot case. He ends by saying that ‘All laws which contradict nature are unjust.’ The letter has been misdated by the University of Southern California, and was written on 12 July 1769 rather than 1777 as they suggest.