The MS is bound with three other texts by Voltaire which once formed part of the Boissy d’Anglas album. These texts are:

• (a) a letter in verse to Algarotti and a letter to the comte d’Argental
• (b) Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne
• (c) Bababec et les fakirs / Lettre d’un Turc.

The letter begins with a poem, ‘A monsieur le maréchal duc de Richelieu, à qui le sénat de Gènes avait érigé une statue’. This is written in a secretarial hand.

In a concluding prose section, added in his own hand, Voltaire notes that he imagines the recipient, Maréchal Louis François Armand de Vignerot du Plessis, will be invited to dine with the President in Paris upon his arrival as his glory means that he must lack nothing. Voltaire ends by saying he has just received Louis’ letter.

The MS has been corrected throughout by Voltaire. It is almost identical to the print edition, except for l.21-27. Here, multiple versions have been crossed out and written over so extensively that only incomplete sentences are legible.

The letter features a poem titled ‘L’homme inutile’.

Voltaire has signed the verse.

The letter contains a copy of a short verse titled ‘À Mme la Duchesse de ***’. The lines of the poem have been added to the bottom of f.97v in two columns of four lines each.