This version of the text reproduces only the dialogue, omitting the Mandarin’s ‘profession of faith’ at ll.393-504.

This version of La Crépinade forms part of a highly decorated collection of texts relating to Voltaire and Rousseau

The MS is written in a professional hand, and the text seems closest to the 1725 editions of the work.

The manuscript is a fair copy and is bound after a copy of Tanis et Zélide which bears an following annotation stating that the work was a gift from Voltaire, though the annotation does not identify the beneficiary. This manuscript is part of a collection assembled by the lawyer Louis-Henri Moulin, and bequeathed to the Academy upon his death in 1885.

The MS is in an unknown hand and features neither corrections nor annotations.

This is possibly the MS copy of the work sent from Voltaire to Louise Honorine Crozat Du Châtel, duchesse de Choiseul on 2 February 1769 [D15457].