Voltaire writes that he and Marie-Louis Denis [née Mignot] are too attached to de Chabanon to allow him to exhaust his genius by making Alceste resemble Quinaut. He explains that de Chabanon embarrasses himself because the comedy that was once fashionable in the first operas is condemned today and that such comedy requires the author to substitute tenderness, the knot that ties, brilliance, and the theatrical. He then quotes verses from Alcide to Pluto: ‘If it is to insult you / To enter by force into your court, / Forgive my courage, / And give thanks to love.’ Voltaire writes that he and Marie-Louis Denis [née Mignot] would not speak so boldly to any but de Chabanon, adding that they could be wrong but do not want to deceive him and imploring de Chabanon to see this frank speech as proof of a tender friendship. He asks that de Chabanon loves and forgives them. In a postscript, Voltaire writes that he read part of the translation of des Georgiques and saw in it the extreme merit of the difficulty overcome. He adds that he did not expect to see so much poetry in the embarrassment of a translation and believes that this work will have a very high reputation among lovers of both ancient and modern writers.