LA FAYETTE (Gilbert Du Motier de). Letter signed to Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond. Paris, 4th February 1790. In-folio, a few stains. "I received with a lively and respectful sensitivity the marks of kindness of which the confederation of Dauphiné and Vivarais deigned to honour me; it is among you, Messieurs, that developed these first movements of freedom, these first acts of the national sovereignty which led us to the recovery of all our rights [allusion to the "day of the tiles" of June 1788 and to the assembly of Vizille of July 1788, movements which preluded the Parisian revolutionary events]. I am pleased to be able, on behalf of the Parisian National Guard and on my own behalf, to add our gratitude to our admiration: it is with the fullest fraternity and the most confident devotion that we unite with you to uphold a Constitution to which you will learn that the National Assembly and the King have just taken a solemn oath [Louis XVI and the Assembly had taken a civic oath on the same day to uphold the Constitution]...". A geologist and vulcanologist from the Dauphiné, Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond (1741-1819) first worked as a lawyer and magistrate in Montélimar. Along with his friend Déodat de Dolomieu, he played a major role in reviving our knowledge of volcanoes. A protégé of Buffon, he joined the King's Garden and then helped set up the Natural History Museum, where he held the first chair of geology created in France (1793). Attached is a letter from Louis-Philippe I to King Léopold I of Belgium, copied in the hand of his secretary, Baron Agathon-Jean-François Fain, former secretary to Napoléon I (s.l.n.d., letter incomplete at the beginning, and badly stained).