NIVERNAIS LOUIS-JULES MANCINI-MAZARINI, DUC DE (1716-1798)

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NIVERNAIS LOUIS-JULES MANCINI-MAZARINI, DUC DE (1716-1798)
Partially autograph manuscript of his Fables; 455 pages mounted on green silk cords and bound at the time in two volumes in-12 supple green morocco, small gilt lace frame decorated with pomegranates in the corners, gilt titles Fables on the upper boards, ornate smooth spines, pink tabis endpapers. Precious personal working manuscript of the Fables of this charming fabulist, poet, diplomat and minister, member of the Académie Française. This manuscript contains 213 numbered fables, plus a prologue, partly in the hand of a copyist, but most of them corrected by the duke, partly in the hand of the fabulist himself. Some fables are very reworked, sometimes with the help of crutches, with passages crossed out. One notes whole fables crossed out, like Le Mâtin et les Roquets (p. 144, "à reformer"), Les Ormes et les Pommiers (p. 215), La Chanterelle (219, hidden by a glued sheet), Le Barbet misantrope (p. 281), Les Ecrevisses (p. 362), La Canne et ses œufs (p. 385), Le Lion detroné (p. 390), Les Portraits (p 394); others are crossed out and entirely redone, such as Les Désirs or le Mancenilier. Sometimes, Nivernais adds an epilogue, a commentary or a note on the source of the fable; thus, for L'homme qui regrette sa vigne (70), he notes: "Marc-Aurele (Liv. 5, parag. 6) arranges the benefactors in 3 classes of which the last one, he says, is of those which do good without being apperceived of it like the vine bears fruit and it is this last process that he advises, and that one never misses an occasion to do good. This is what gave rise to the idea of this fable"; or for L'asne et le Cheval (64): "The morality of this fable is a thought of my second wife". Others are inspired by Aesop, Abstenius, "Pilpay", the history of China, the Gulistan, the Tartar Tales, travel books, Dodsley, Desbillons, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Buffon, Fontenelle, Marmontel, etc. This is the personal copy of the Duke of Nivernais, who himself drew up the "Table des fables contenuës en ce volume" at the head of each volume. At the head of the first volume, he also drew up a summary of the "Fables read at the Academy in the public sessions" in 1765, 1768, 1770 at the Saint Louis, on May 24, 1766 "le Pce hereditaire de Brunswick etant à l'Academie", on December 3, 1768 "le Roy de Dannemarck etant à l'Academie et m'ayant prié de lire quelques de mes fables" (the King of Dannemarck being at the Academy and having asked me to read a few of my fables), on December 22, 1768 "à la réception de M. l'Abbé de Condillac, in 1770 at those of Saint-Lambert and of the Archbishop of Toulouse, on March 7, 1771 "the King of Sweden being at the assembly of the Academy", on June 15, 1784 "the King of Sweden being at the assembly of the Academy at the reception of M. le Mis de Montesquiou". These Fables will be published in 1796 in 2 volumes. A small autograph poem of the duke of Nivernais is joined: "Verses imprecated to M. de Caraman the day that his children had played two pieces of luy".
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