The collection contains a preface and twenty-three other texts written by Voltaire under the pseudonyms of Catherine and Guillaume Vadé. Attached to these texts is a letter from Voltaire to Pierre Laurent Buirette written in the hand of Jean-Louis Wagnière in which Voltaire mocks what is happening in Paris and elsewhere. He writes that he has not read a public paper for many years but that he nevertheless knows what is going on in Moscow, adding that the Empress of Russia ‘condescended’ to inform hi that she had converted Abraham Chaumeix to a tolerant the year before. Voltaire writes that if Abraham has done ‘this stupidity’, sold his wife to a Boyar, and instead of obtaining oxen, cows, sheep, and servants had fallen into poverty then it was probably because he was a drunkard and wine is very expensive in Scythia. By contrast, he notes, de Belloy’s friend in Paris, Fréron, earns cheap money and gets drunk in the same way. Voltaire then discusses actors, saying that de Belloy’s remarks on the actors in Paris does not surprise him because they are so rich in their own content that they can easily do without Racine’s verses. He bemoans their tendencies to cut out sections of Racine’s verses and insert their own instead. In the concluding section of the letter, Voltaire writes that he thinks the printers of Paris know as much as the comedians.

Voltaire states that he is writing to Marie-Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, marquise Du Deffand from Paris, before discussing literature. He questions why the Marquise wants to make him read English novels, such as Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, when she will not read the Old Testament. He tells the Marquise that if she is to enjoy reading, she first needs a little passion, an object that is interesting, and a determined desire to educate herself that occupies her soul continuously, adding that if she were to know Italian she could be sure of a month of pleasure from Aristotle. Voltaire says that he will send her one or two chants of La pucelle d’Orleans that are unknown to others and in which he tries to imitate Aristotle (he claims to have limited success in this). He also advises that she may enjoy his Histoire universelle if she likes a picture of ‘this ugly world’ because in it he has painted men as they are. Voltaire then turns to various European empire-building projects, before stating that France’s only merit and superiority is that there are a small number of geniuses who make French spoken in Vienna, Stokholm, and Moscow. He returns to the Marquise’s reading, stating that he he found pleasure in reading Rabelais but that the Marquise was not learned enough to enjoy it. He expresses his desires for French translations of the philosophical works of Lord Bolingbroke and Dean Swift’s Tale of a Tub, before discussing various retellings of the story of Lucretia.