The copy is part of the collection of materials gathered for the De Cayroll edition.

The copy is part of the collection of materials gathered for the De Cayroll edition.

A variant for Canto 14 has been added in a second hand.

A book of reading notes on historical subjects, mainly in the hands of Voltaire, Collini and Villaume. There is a note in an unknown hand on f.58r. Wagnière has jotted at the start of the notebook (at the top of f.1r): ‘ce cahier contient 58 feuillets écrits, soit 116 pages’, then, heavily crossed out: ‘je prie qu’on en ait soin, n’aiant pout de double étant obligé de rendre l’original. le […] peut écrire à messieurs les rédacteurs ils pourront me l’envoier pour le copier’. The final leaf contains a list of errata for the work that was to become l’Essai sur les mœurs.

The MS forms part of a recueil of works from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Voltaire opens by saying that he has sent a money order for 2400 lt, going on to state that nobody pays him and so he instead use a loans system. He adds that without the assistance of the recipient he would not have sufficient funds to cover his household expenses, though he acknowledges that the recipient is weary of the arrangement and therefore expresses his hopes to be able to repay their advances soon. Voltaire concludes by discussing Berlin’s desire for peace with Russia, something he claims the press and Vienna deny, and ends by asserting that we will soon be enlightened.

The letter concerns Voltaire’s death on 30 May 1778 and discusses the difficulties his servants faced in finding a burial place for him after they removed his body from Paris.