Lot n° 226
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VOITURE Vincent (1597-1648) poet and letter writer, he was o - Lot 226
VOITURE Vincent (1597-1648) poet and letter writer, he was one of the founding members of the French Academy.
L.A.S. "Voiture", August 11 [1645], to Claude de MESMES comte d'AVAUX; 9 pages in-fol. (small marginal tear on the last leaf due to a broken seal without affecting the text).
Beautiful and partly unpublished letter evoking in particular the marriage of Julie d'Angennes, who became Marquise de Montausier, and the negotiations of the treaty of Westphalia.
[Claude de Mesmes, comte d'AVAUX (1595-1650), superintendent of Finances, "the man of the robe who had the most beautiful spirit, and who wrote best in French", according to Tallemant des Réaux, had been appointed in 1643, with the duke of Longueville and Abel Servien, to represent France at the Munster conferences which were to result in 1648 in the treaty of Westphalia, putting an end to the Thirty Years' War. Since 1642, he maintained Voiture as a first clerk at a salary of 4 000 livres.
It is here the letter itself sent to the count of Avaux, who noted at the head the date of his answer (September 20, 1645), but who gave it back to Voiture so that this one can insert it in his OEuvres ; Étienne Martin de Pinchesne (1616-1680), Voiture's nephew, made some corrections, and crossed out with a stroke of the pen many passages, which remained unpublished and do not appear in the edition of this letter CCII of the "Lettres de Monsieur de Voiture" in the original posthumous edition of the OEuvres de Monsieur de Voiture in 1650 at Augustin Courbé (p. 713-716). It is enamelled with Latin quotations.
Julie d'ANGENNES (1607-1671), eldest daughter of the famous marquise of Rambouillet, famous for her beauty as well as for her wit, by which she enchanted the familiars of the Blue Room of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, ended up marrying, one month before this letter, on July 13, 1645, the marquis Charles de MONTAUSIER (1610-1690), her suitor for fourteen years, who had had the precious collection of Julie's Garland composed for her].
"My lord, if I were such an honest man that one could say of you and of me Et cantare pares, at least one would not say et respondere parati. I received your letter yesterday, and I am replying to it today, yours are not going so fast as that and, as if you were at the end of the East Indies, it will be years before I receive any more, for my part I admire you [] and I cannot understand that a person who has so much advantage in speaking, has so much pleasure in keeping silent; The first three lines of your letter, and what you say about this past month, are worth more than anything our Academy could do, but what salt have you seasoned your end of the meal with. May I die if I have ever enjoyed anything so much; poor Mr. Le Lievre, who had not been in my mind for more than twenty years, has gone through it again, he, all his guests, and his whole house with unbelievable joy, and has brought back all the species of that time; It is in truth a great happiness for the beautiful spirits that you have had better things to do than we have [] What regret I have, Monseigneur, when I read the things you write about not being with you, and what a bad trick I know fortune has played on me to have destined me to spend my life far from a person who is so precious and so delightful at the same time" He read more than once to the Marquise de MONTAUSIER "what you wrote to me for her, and from so many letters which came to her from all sides, she said that nothing so gallant has been written to her, she ordered me to tell you that she is extremely happy that you approve her marriage, that she would not have kept it well if you had not added your consent, and that she would have asked you if you had been here [, and that you will always be a plenipotentiary in her affairs, as you are at this time in the most important one that the King has [passage deleted] ; but that in your absence she had judged on many testimonies of affection that she knew that Mr. Marquis de Montosier had received from you, that you were not contrary to something that he desired; she and her husband have charged me to give you a thousand thanks on their behalf, and to assure you [with the most express words that can be found, deleted] of their very great service; au reste Monseigneur je suis bien aise de ce que vous aves un commis qui face parler de luy dans le monde, et que l'on cognoisse un peu plus dans les pays estrangers que Mr. Filandre, et Mr. Coiffier " Then Voiture evokes the negotiations, as well as the rivalry between Avaux and SERVIEN: "One will not have guiere more joye of the general peace, than the honestes gens have had, of the peace of you and Monsr Servien. I believe that it is all good as you write to me, [] if you can make it last, there can be nothing better"... Two paragraphs follow, the first concerning MAZARIN, the second concerning
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