The collection contains a preface and twenty-three other texts written by Voltaire under the pseudonyms of Catherine and Guillaume Vadé. Attached to these texts is a letter from Voltaire to Pierre Laurent Buirette written in the hand of Jean-Louis Wagnière in which Voltaire mocks what is happening in Paris and elsewhere. He writes that he has not read a public paper for many years but that he nevertheless knows what is going on in Moscow, adding that the Empress of Russia ‘condescended’ to inform hi that she had converted Abraham Chaumeix to a tolerant the year before. Voltaire writes that if Abraham has done ‘this stupidity’, sold his wife to a Boyar, and instead of obtaining oxen, cows, sheep, and servants had fallen into poverty then it was probably because he was a drunkard and wine is very expensive in Scythia. By contrast, he notes, de Belloy’s friend in Paris, Fréron, earns cheap money and gets drunk in the same way. Voltaire then discusses actors, saying that de Belloy’s remarks on the actors in Paris does not surprise him because they are so rich in their own content that they can easily do without Racine’s verses. He bemoans their tendencies to cut out sections of Racine’s verses and insert their own instead. In the concluding section of the letter, Voltaire writes that he thinks the printers of Paris know as much as the comedians.