Nicolas-Edme RÉTIF DE LA BRETONNE. L.A.S. "Restif La Bretone", 2 thermidor X (21 July 1802), [to Louis de Fontanes]; 2 pages in-4. Long and very beautiful letter about his Posthumous, and the lawsuits against the work, which caused his ruin. "Les Lettres posthumes, ou Lettres du Tombeau, are the work that causes my pain. He reminds that it is the same work of which "a lady [Fanny de Beauharnais] spoke to you, [...] a few years ago, where it was question of a duke Mutipliandre". He summarizes in detail the work: "A president became madly in love with the marquise of Chazù. He cannot touch her, as long as she is married. In despair, he poisons himself. The fatal drink is hardly swallowed, when the Lady, widow for two days, arrives. She said to the President of Fontlhète: I love you, I loved you; but my duty was in the way. It no longer stands in the way; I know your despair; I have come to give myself to you. Fontlhète, in despair of having carried out his fatal resolution, takes all possible antidotes; he suspends his death, he marries the Marquise, he even flatters himself to escape, by the vivid impression made on him by an unhoped-for happiness. But after a few months, he feels that the fatal blow is delivered. His wife is pregnant. He wants to hide from her the sight of her pain and her death. He gets a commission from the government for Florence. From there, he writes letters, which he tries to make amusing; they are crazy, gay, sometimes free; all are double; the one of the present circumstance is always followed by another, which a Friend must send, only after his death, to prolong fictitiously the duration of his existence. He speaks first of a Yfflasie & of a Klarendon, married lovers, perished on the 1st night of their nuptials, by an earthquake caused by an eruption of Vesuvius. (for although they are both English, they are in Naples); Fontlhète takes the opportunity to describe the state of souls, and we see his goal, which is to persuade his wife that he will be present at all her actions, without being able to speak to her, for lack of organs [...] Then comes the story of Duke Multipliandre, to make his letters amusing, by extraordinary antecedents. It is here where one finds some, which one believed free; but that Fonthlete wrote, only to make believe in his health. One of these Avantures, which begins the IIIrd Part, is free indeed, one offers to change it. There is still a historiette a little free at the end of the IVme Part, one proposes to cut it off." Rétif affirms: " The goal of the work is that of a tender husband, who wants to separate as much as possible, the instant of his death, from that when his wife will learn it. And that, by this general reason, that an old misfortune is always less sensitive, than a recent misfortune ". He adds that "my situation is terrible, attacked for a work against morals while this work is all in favor of good morals"... And he begs Fontanes: "You have spirit, you have a soul; conceive the horror of my situation. [...] Hope, the last good of the unfortunate, hope abandons me. I still had some works; fear makes me stop them, leave them. And yet, ruined by the Assignats, it was my last resource. An entire family is reduced to despair, father, or rather a grandfather, widowed mother, orphaned children at an early age, for a dubious indecency, excusable by its motives, & I see myself, old, at the mercy of people who may not feel, or at least do not feel like me. What will become of me? Do I have no hope but death? But death will only save me from misfortune; it will not save a widow and orphans. He would like to obtain a "literary pension from the Minister of the Interior. Never was there more need for it, more work; a loss of all that I possessed. This is my fate. [...] I am to be pitied, by a misfortune, not by a crime: I did not violate any law"... He would need a pension from the Institute...