STENDHAL CONDORCET, Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat,... Lot n° 1230

Sketch of a historical picture of the progress of the human mind. Posthumous work. Paris, Agasse, An III [1795]. In-8 (180 x 112 mm) from VIII, 389 pp.; marble paperboard, smooth spine with a manuscript title piece on paper (German binding at the time), modern black morocco case (Boichot). Original posthumous edition, edited by the author's wife, Sophie Marie-Louise de Condorcet, and the permanent secretary of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-lettres, Pierre Daunou. The Sketch is a capital text, emblematic of the project of the Enlightenment, of its ideology of progress as well as of its conception of the continuous perfectibility of the human spirit. It is the last written work of Condorcet, who died in his cell at Bourg-la-Reine, who ? in a sublime and continuous absence of himself [dedicated to him] the short interval that separated him from death? (Warning, p. VI). STENDHAL'S EXAMPLE Stendhal's copy Precious copy having belonged to Stendhal, with the autograph signature ? Dominique? as well as a part of Stendhal's annotation with the characteristic "C", removed then restored in the 19th century on the title page. In 1906, Paul Leautaud published a famous article on ? Les pseudonymes de Beyle? reedited in the Mercure de France in 1908. Since then, the census has grown steadily to now reach the extravagant sum of 437. Among these pseudonyms, Dominique is certainly the most famous. He is the subject of a complete entry in the Stendhal Dictionary. Its origin goes back to two events that we don't know how to link. The first marks the day when Stendhal heard for the first time in Novarra the music of Domenico Cimarosa, which will take for him the dimension of the masterpiece. Following this concert, Beyle took the pseudonym Dominique on numerous occasions. The second event, and the first in chronological order since it dates back to 1799, is that of the first place in Paris where the sixteen-year-old from Grenoble, Fr