Included in the collection is: XLII, 119., an autograph letter signed from Devellenne, to Benjamin Franklin, written from Paris and undated. In the letter, Devellenne discusses a statement in Bacon’s Philosophical Works that the claims that the Greeks condemned to death the first physicists who presumed to explain the natural causes of thunder. Devellenne then applies to Franklin to aid in verifying this claim, before turning to the question of belief in God, using Voltaire and Socrates in an attempt to find a resolution.