The recueil was compiled between 1770 and July 1777. It is titled ‘Divers chosses detachee’ and contains c.20 texts by or relating to Voltaire. The recueil includes, amongst others, the following works by Voltaire:

• Balance égale
• Le Sermon du Rabin Akib
• L’aigle, le renard et le serpent
• Épitre à un homme (Turgot)
• Épitre à Horace
• Les Systèmes
• Épitre de M. de Voltaire au Pape Clement XIV au sujet de l’Ordonnance de sa sainteté qui deffend la castration
• Paralèlle de la mythologie et de la légende
• Épitre à Monsieur Marmontel
• Réponse de M. de Voltaire à l’épitre de M. de Pezay
• Le dimanche ou les filles de Minée
• La religion naturelle

This MS presents the unauthorised changes proposed by Étienne Noël Damilaville and Nicolas-Claude Thiriot, as well as the corresponding deletions to Voltaire’s original text.

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.