Nicolas-Edme RÉTIF DE LA BRETONNE. Autograph manuscript, Paris dévoilé, [1802?]; 2pages in-4 (one margin uneven). Precious beginning of the project for a Paris dévoilé (this beginning is missing from the manuscript kept at the BnF, Mss n.a.f. 22772, ff. 52-86; this unpublished text was published by Pierre Testud in 1990 in n°12 of Études rétiviennes). The manuscript bears, under the title Paris dévoilé, and the epigraph "ô Tempora! ô Mores!" the subtitle: Première Partie / Préliminaires. It is an evocation of the Parisian underworld, followed by a critique of Louis-Sébastien Mercier. "Parisiens, qui croyés connaître Paris, vous alés voir, après avoir lu me que vous ne le connaissés pas... Avés-vous entendu parler de Mad. Ogret & de ses Filles, de Mad. Yverkop & de ses Innocentes; de Mad. Cunégonde, & de ses chefs-d'œuvres qu'elle nommait Ressembleuses [...] Les Femmes dont je parle sont successeuses de la Pâris, cette Femme célèbre, morte Dame de Paroisse, qui donneait une éducation si excellente" qu'un père furieux, venu chercher sa fille, d'obligaire convenir qu'elle était parfaitement éduquée et parti en laissant elle et en proposant de lui envoyer sa cadette... "But which women succeeded Pâris? This Woman of Genius, in her genre? An ignoble Montigni, a scoundrel Piron [...] & so many other despicable creatures whose names would soil my pages". Then comes the criticism of Louis-Sébastien Mercier: "Do you think you know Paris, when you have read Mercier, this novelist, who plays the historian, who knows Paris, his homeland, as he knows Descartes, Newton, Copernicus, Galileo, & Astronomy; who speaks to you of what he has not seen [...] Also his Tableau de Paris, l'Ancien come le Nouveau, is a novel. I, Aquilin des Escopètes [name of the Palais-Royal narrator, concealing Grimod de la Rynière], want to unearth Mercier, as Baillet unearthed the Saints. Let my successor Restif Labretonne, whom Chénier calls l'Emule en folie de Mercier, spare Mercier, if he wants, he can have his reasons: As for me, I won't spare him!..." In a footnote, Rétif gives his own eulogy (taken from the German novel Maurice): "Restif this truly extraordinary genius, this inconceivable apparition, in the century in which we live, does not seem to me to be appreciated. Never has he possessed more imagination, more originality, a style more his own, a manner more new & more endearing"... Etc.