Jean-François de LA HARPE (1739-1803). L.S., 1st June 1778, to a countess 8 pages in-4 (some slight wetness). Long letter on the death of VOLTAIRE. Voltaire's death overshadowed all other events. "This great man, whom we had hoped to keep for a long time, ended his career on Saturday 30 May 1778 at eleven o'clock in the evening. He deplored the fact that, despite being 84 years old, this great man had shortened his life through his imprudence: "A fortnight before his death, filled with the project of a new Dictionary which he was proposing to the Académie, and the execution of which was suffering from some difficulties, he took seven or eight cups of caffé before going to the assembly, in order to give himself more strength and resilience. In fact he spoke with extreme vivacity, and on leaving he admitted to me that he was exhausted". On his return home, the irritations and strangures from which he was already suffering increased sharply, and "he took to his bed, from which he has never since left". He suffered so much that he was prescribed "laudanum, a kind of tempered opium" to ease the pain. But this did not work quickly enough, and the Maréchal de Richelieu, having visited him, sent him "a narcotic beverage which he himself used for his gout pains". At the same time, he continued to take high doses of laudanum: "The effect of the poppy juice, taken in such small doses, was soon felt. In the morning his head was gone, and he was delirious for forty-eight hours". His doctor Tronchin tried to combat the opium as much as possible... "I kept him up for a quarter of the day. I talked to him for a quarter of an hour and he spoke as well as usual, albeit with some difficulty and very slowly, and what decided his death was that his stomach was paralysed by the opium. He could tolerate neither food nor drink. The fatal narcotic had exhausted the principle of life that remained to him"... Eight days before his death, the doctors pronounced him condemned, and "he himself must have felt that his end was near: you can't escape your destiny, he told me, I came to Paris to die". Reason soon left him, and Voltaire, "for the last six days of his life, was nothing more than a sagging, plaintive machine. He was still suffering from a weak bladder and took nothing but a little orange jelly, or sucked small pieces of ice to soothe the heat that was devouring him". Three days before he died, his mind returned to him when there was a turnaround in the Lally-Tollendal trial: "This news revived the dying Mr de Voltaire. He dictated a three-line letter to Lally's son", and had a note written, which he attached to his tapestry: "On 26 May, the legal assassination committed by Pasquier (councillor in Parliament) against Lally was avenged by the King's Council. This was his last effort. Shortly afterwards, gangrene set in on his bladder and he stopped suffering. He was slowly dying out"... He pushed away the priests who had come to his bedside (Abbé Gautier and the parish priest of Saint-Sulpice): "Let me die in peace! La Harpe then went on at length to discuss the problem of Voltaire's burial, which the clergy were determined to refuse him unless he signed "a formal and detailed retraction of all his writings [...] but as Mr de Voltaire did not have his head, they did not think to present it to him, especially after the way he had rejected the parish priest". Despite the intervention of the minister Amelot, the archbishop still absolutely refused to "give Christian burial to the enemy of Christianity". The king did not want to interfere and said to leave it to the priests. It was then decided to bury him on his lands in Ferney, but as the same objections from the bishop of Annecy were feared, "Abbot Mignot agreed to have him transported to his abbey in Sellières in Champagne and to bury him in his abbey church. [The day after his death he was embalmed. He was put in a dressing gown and nightcap in a post coach. He was taken to the abbey of Sellières, where his nephew gave him a very nice service, and had him buried by the door of the nave", while waiting for him to be able to go to Ferney one day... La Harpe, like the public, severely criticised the attitude of the clergy, who had only listened to their passion and had "violated the legal forms"... "What is more important is the fact that the clergy, who were the only ones to listen to him, did not want him to die... What is most extraordinary is that all public papers [...] were forbidden to make any mention of the death of Mr de Voltaire, and that the Journal de Paris, which announces all deaths, did not announce his"... He then talks about a performance at the Comédie italienne of Zulima, "a play of enchantment", his tragedy Les Barmécides, in preparation at the Comédie Française, and finally copies some charming verses on Lady Spencer by Delille...