VOITURE Vincent (1597-1648) poète et épistolier,... Lot n° 245

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 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 Beautiful and partly unpublished letter evoking in particular the marriage of Julie d'Angennes, who became Marquise de Montausier, and the negotiations of the treaty of Westphalia.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Voiture's nephew, made some corrections, and crossed out with a stroke of the pen many passages, which remained unpublished and do not appear in the edition of this letter CCII of the "Lettres de Monsieur de Voiture" in the original posthumous edition of the OEuvres de Monsieur de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]. " Monseigneur If I were so honest a man that one could say of you and of me Et cantare pares, at least one will 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; What a 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 so precious and so delightful together. 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 done it well if you had not given your consent, and that she would have asked you to do so 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 Monsieur her husband have asked me to give you a thousand thanks on their behalf, and to assure you [with the most express words that can be found, crossed out] of their very good service; in addition, Monseigneur, I am very happy that you have a clerk who can speak of him in the world, and that I am known a little more in foreign countries than Mr. Filandre and Mr. Coiffier. Then Voiture evokes the negotiations, as well as the rivalry between Avaux and Servien: "One will not have more joy of the general peace, than the honest people 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 the famous Marquise de SABLÉ, as well as her own wages: "Monsieur le Cardinal en plusieur