Des religions et des gouvernemens par rapport aux mœurs, Suivis de quelques aperçus

            Unedited and unrecorded, this autograph manuscript by the widely published curate of Gentilly decries the “the materialist system organized after articles inserted in the Encyclopédie” (tr.). The first three sections approach the subject socially, philosophically, politically and spiritually. The fourth section has six essays on rich and poor, faith and reason, public morals, etc.
            DESTRUISSARD’S FRENETIC AUTHORIAL PRACTICE IS ON DISPLAY THROUGHOUT — erasures, additions, twenty-seven correction slips pasted in, lengthy supplemental foot- and endnotes, inserted leaves, footnotes to footnotes and hundreds of other alterations.
            What he clearly intended to be a fair copy quickly succumbed to chaos. His handwriting turns careless and of uneven size. The number of lines per page varies widely. Tidy changes give way to cluttered margins. Interlinear insertions run out of space and so up the page. By the quondam “final” section, “Nos derniers mots”, he can’t even get past the divisional title before making a change, then “Still more words”, then “Conclusory Maxims”, then a fifteen-page “P.S.”…. Enough was never enough! In good condition.
¶See Frére’s Manuel du bibliographie normand I: 353 and Quérard’s La France littéraire II: 539.