Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, countess... - Lot 159 - Ader

Lot 159
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2500 - 3000 EUR
Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, countess... - Lot 159 - Ader
Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, countess of LAFAYETTE (1634-1693). L.A.S. "From La Vergne," [Espinasse] December 12 [1656], to Abbé Gilles Ménage in Paris; 2 1/2 pages in-4, address with trace of black wax seal (old transcription attached). Beautiful literary and friendly letter. "You have had such good reasons for not writing me two ordinary letters that I would be very wrong to complain about them. I think they are too good and I would like you to have less valid reasons than the one of your present indisposition that I have little health I have a pity nompareille of those which do not have any and surely there is nothing so precious in the life and one cannot have rest without health and with it one can almost be consoled of all finally carry you well and you will be happy"... She received his Italian poems [Rime italiane (1636), joined to the Poemata]: "I have found many that I did not know, there is such a great quantity that I take part in that if I had cut out two or three things I would say that they are all for me, that rewards me and beyond having been the cause that you have studied Italian with care, I am very happy that all the praises that you give me are in a language that is heard less by the people who know me than by those who do not, because at least I will not be ashamed of knowing that all those who will read them will say that I do not deserve them; those who have never seen me will surely believe that a man who makes verses so well in a foreign language has too much spirit to make them in praise of a person who is not quite worthy of it and on this thought here is a way of Me Laure [allusion to Petrarch's Laure] I will read your poems with great attention and will send you at the first ordinary time the places which will touch me the most "... Finally she asks Ménage if he has indeed "sent her a letter from the Jansenists" [probably the 15th of Pascal's Provinciales, published on November 23], and concludes: "adieu nostre cher amy Menage raimons nous bien je vous en prie nous ne scaurions en verité mieux faire". Correspondence (ed. Beaunier), n° 47.
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