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LETTER L.: To the Same. - Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, Complete Works, vol. 4 Familiar Letters; Miscellaneous Pieces; The Temple of Gnidus; A Defence of the Spirit of Laws [1777]

Edition used:

The Complete Works of M. de Montesquieu (London: T. Evans, 1777), 4 vols. Vol. 4.

Part of: Complete Works of Montesquieu, 4 vols.

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LETTER L.

To the Same.

MY dear Abbé, you must have received the letter I had written to you at Naples, and the one since addressed to you at Rome. I now no longer know in what part of the world you are. But as one of your letters marked August 13, I. 54, is dated from Bologna, and announces to me your approaching return to Paris, I address this letter to you at Turin, at your friend’s the Marquis de Barol.

I begin by thanking you for not having forgotten the wine of Roche-Maurin, and promise you that all due attention shall be paid in executing Lord Pembroke’s commission. It is to my friends, but especially to you, who are at any time worth ten others, that I owe the spreading reputation which my wine has acquired through Europe for these three or four years past. As to payment, that is an article, thank God, I am never in a hurry about. You have not told me if Lord Pembroke, who speaks to you of my wine, remembers my person. It is now about two years since I took leave of him, full of esteem and veneration for his excellent qualities. You do not take the least notice of M. de Cloire who was with him, a man of merit, very intelligent, and whom I should be very glad to see again. It would afford me the highest pleasure, if your affairs could permit your coming from Turin to Bourdeaux. Now you, who see every thing, why not be desirous of seeing again la Brede, and your friends who are all ready to receive you with acclamations, and repeated Io Pæans. But perhaps I shall see you in Paris—Take notice, you are to look no where for a lodging, but in my house; and the more so now that Mrs. Boyer, your Hostess heretofore, is deceased. When I shall have heard that you are arrived at Paris, then will I hasten my departure hence.

What the Pope has told you about the letter from Lewis XIV* , to Clement XI, is indeed a curious anecdote. The confessor doubtless had not more difficulty to prevail on the king to promise that he would command a retractation to be made of the four propositions of the clergy; than he met with in making him promise to the Pope, that his bull should be received without contradiction. But kings cannot always make good their promises: because they often promise through too great a reliance on the supposed fidelity of designing men, who advise them according to their own interested views. Farewell my dear Count, I salute and embrace you a thousand times.

[* ]His Holiness told him, that he had in his hands a letter by which that Monarch had promised Clement XI. that he would order his then clergy to retract from the deliberation concerning the four propositions of the clergy of France, in the year 1682; that this letter which he set so high a value on, he had the greatest difficulty to get from Cardinal Hannibal Albani Camerlingue; and that by way of an equivalent for it, he was obliged to grant him, but not without some seruple of conscience (as he said) certain dispensations which this cardinal insisted upon. Father le Tellier, the confessor, went at the same time to find Cardinal Polignac, and told him that the King of France being determined to maintain the Pope’s infallibility throughout his dominions, he prayed his eminence would lend a vigorous hand, to which the Cardinal replied, “Father, if you undertake any such thing, you will soon destroy the king.” This answer caused a suspension of the Confessor’s intriguing politics, relative to that affair.