Sixte-Ruffo de BONNEVAL (1742-1820) abbot of the abbey of Saint-Léonard de Corbigny, deputy of the clergy at the Estates-General and member of the National Constituent Assembly, he emigrated and ended up as a canon at the cathedral of Vienna. L.A.S. (minute), Vienna in Austria May 10, 1814, to the members of the Clergy of Paris; 4 pages large in-fol. very filled with a tight handwriting. Long and interesting letter written one week after the solemn entry of Louis XVIII in Paris. He expresses his congratulations on the demonstrations that welcomed the return of Louis XVIII, and recalls his constant defense of their interests until the tyranny extends its oppression to all Europe. He agrees with them on a bicameral parliament, the separation of the legislative and executive powers, the freedom of all the cults (and not a simple tolerance), but he contests the current legitimacy of the Senate: " Either Buonaparte was a legitimate sovereign, or he was not. If he was a legitimate sovereign, the Senate could not expel him from the throne, since the last revolutionary constitution, which was confirmed by so many Senatus Consultes, did not give him the right to do so. If Buonaparte, as one cannot doubt, was not a legitimate sovereign, why does the Senate, which is nothing other than his creation, remain "... The arrival of Monsieur, the King's brother, was to put an end to this institution which is the continuation of twenty-five years of usurpation... Quoting his own writings, he pleads for a state constitution, rejecting the draft constitution adopted by the Conservative Senate as "an odious bargain, which these gentlemen pretended to make with the King" and "a masterpiece of ignorance" revolting for justice and reason. He rejects the confusion of the freedom of the cults and the freedom of the consciences, and the State without cult proposed by Portalis: "it is pure religious indifferentism, it is the formal renunciation of the Catholic religion; in a word, it is philantropic atheism, or the atheistic philantropy of the revolution"... He opposes "everything that would be undertaken against our true constitution, the legitimate authority of the King, the Catholic religion of which I have the honor to be minister, and justice"... Etc.