To Benjamin Franklin from the Abbé Morellet, [26 April 1781]
From the Abbé Morellet
ALS: American Philosophical Society
jeudy matin [April 26, 1781]5
Monsieur
J’ai en effet six volumes de mémoires de l’acad. des sciences à vous. Je les donnerai au relieur dés que vous me feres connoitre la maniere dont vous voules qu’ils soient reliés.6 Vous pourries envoyer le reste de vos brochures chés moi et tout se feroit en même tems.7 J’attendrai votre reponse ou j’irai la chercher moi même dimanche matin.8 Receves les assurances de mon entier devouement.
L’abbé Morellet
Addressed: A Monsieur / Monsieur Franklin / ministre plenipotentiaire des etats / unis de l’amerique / à Passy
Notation: Morellet l’abbé
5. The Thursday before April 30, the day on which Morellet wrote WTF repeating the offer made here. APS. See Medlin, Morellet I, 452.
6. The second quarto edition of the Histoire et mémoires de l’Académie royale des sciences de Paris … (Paris, 1772–80), taken over in 1779 from Charles-Joseph Pankoucke by Nicolas Léger Moutard, both printer-booksellers at Paris: Suzanne Tucoo-Chala, Charles-Joseph Panckoucke & la librairie française 1736–1798 (Pau and Paris, 1977), pp. 259, 261–2. BF’s collection, bound into ninety-one volumes, is at the APS: Medlin, Morellet, I, 451–2n.
7. The folio edition of the Description des arts et métiers, published by the Académie des sciences (103 vols., Paris, 1761–88). The brochures or cahiers were available from Moutard, to whom Morellet had written for instructions on how to bind BF’s copies: Medlin, Morellet, I, 450; Arthur H. Cole and George B. Watts, The Handicrafts of France … (Boston, 1952), p. 23.
BF also subscribed through Morellet to the quarto edition of the Description des arts et métiers, published at Neuchâtel: XXXI, 4; Medlin, Morellet, I, 419n, 420n.
8. Morellet wrote WTF on [May 16, 1781?] that he had received all of BF’s books from the binder. APS.