To Benjamin Franklin from Jean-Baptiste Le Roy: Two Letters, [1780]
From Jean-Baptiste Le Roy: Two Letters
(I) ALS: American Philosophical Society; (II) L: American Philosophical Society
I.
ce jeudy matin [1780]
Voulez vous bien Mon Illustre Docteur que j’aye L’honneur de vous redemander un papier que Je vous ai remis il y a déja plusieurs mois. Ce Papier est un rapport fait par M De Lavoisier d’une méthode et d’un projet d’experiences proposé par M. Meusnier Ingenieur du Roi et Correspondant de LAcadémie pour determiner la forme des Magasins à Poudre. Il étoit question que vous examiniez ce rapport pour qu’ensuite nous le lisions à LAcadémie. Vous savez que vous M. Lavoisier et feu mon pauvre ami M. Darcy et moi étions commissaires.9 Comme il Seroit important que nous lussions ce rapport demain à LAcadémie Si vous pouvez le trouver au milieu de vos papiers Vous me ferez grand plaisir de me le renvoyer. Vous connoissez tous les sentimens Mon Illustre docteur que Je vous ai vouès pour la Vie
Le Roy
Addressed: A Monsieur / Monsieur Franklin / Ministre et Plenipotentiaire / des Etats unis de L’Amérique / en son hôtel / à Passy
Notation: Le Roi
II.
Will you be So good to let me know what the Countess of Brionne who went to See you yesterday wanted to say to me. Your man told me yesterday that She intended to call at my House but that he told her I was gone to the Bois de Boulogne. I went yesterday to propose you a game at chess but I was told you were gone to bed Tho’ it was not late for it was not nine o’clock yet
Accept my Dear Doctor of my best compliments
Addressed: a Monsieur / Monsieur Franklin Ministre / Plenipotentiaire &c &c
9. This was the second of two reports that BF refereed on the construction of powder magazines; the first is in XXIX, 209–11. The MS of this second report has not been located. It was published under the title, “Rapport sur la reconstruction des magasins à poudre de l’arsenal,” and given the general date of 1780, in Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, Oeuvres (5 vols., Paris, 1862–93), VI, 1–8. (There Lavoisier cited the commissioners as BF, Le Roy, Perronnet, and himself.) The paper evaluated a report on powder magazine construction submitted by Meusnier de La Place, based on the initial findings by BF et al.
1. Dated on the most tenuous of clues. The woman in question was Louise-Julie-Constance de Rohan-Montauban, comtesse de Brionne, allied by marriage to the house of Austria and mother of the Prince de Lambesc (grand-écuyer of Louis XV): Dictionnaire de la noblesse, XVII, 516, XII, 437. Why she should seek out Le Roy is by no means obvious. According to Bachaumont, Mémoires secrets, she was in a state of agitation on two occasions in 1780: on Feb. 27 (XV, 60), she was lobbying in favor of her son against Necker’s plan of reform for the King’s household, and on April 2 (XV, 101 ff.) she panicked because this same Prince de Lambesc and his brother were in a carriage that ran over and wounded a priest carrying the sacraments.