Louis de Brancas, Duke of VILLARS (1663-1739)... - Lot 296 - Ader

Louis de Brancas, Duke of VILLARS (1663-1739) diplomat. L.A.S., Paris July 10, 1681; 5 pages and a half in-4. Enclosed: Letter from a Francois ecclesiastic written from Rome to a Gentile of his friends, Rome February 4, 1703, on the earthquake (4 p. impr.). Account of his return from a diplomatic mission in Rome. His walk was less hasty and much more tiring than expected: "I was assesed to Genoa in three and a half days. But I saw myself stopped by such an accident that happened to my people, [as well as] to the doctor of his eminence at the road to Ligourne with the Marquis de Bellefons so that not being able to advance by tere and seeing myself in the necessity of staying eight days in Genoa, I was better off going to Marseilles"... But instead it was ten days in Antibes, and his people healed and himself tired of the sea, he went back to land, "but from there to Avignon he had no post settled with all the mountains of Provence to cross, so that I was in Leo only seventeen days. I left Leo in the early hours of the morning, when the fever took me to Nevers and sent me the parcel that his eminence had given me for Mr. de Croissi with the other letters, except those which he had been kind enough to write to the King, but which I had kept"... He arrived in Paris on the 30th June. He went to Versailles with the marshal d'Estrées: "I returned in the evening with a great rumour which gives me fever almost every evening"; he could not therefore go and give his duties to the Marquis de Cœuvres...