DELAMBRE (Jean-Baptiste). Autograph Apostille signed (about - Lot 75

DELAMBRE (Jean-Baptiste). Autograph Apostille signed (about 2 pp. in-4) on a letter from his wife Élisabeth Sinfray (one p. 3/4 in-4) addressed to Michel-Louis-Étienne Regnaud de Saint-Jean-d'Angély. S.l., [February or March 1816]. Élisabeth Delambre, related to the family of Regnault's wife, writes: "Days, weeks, months have passed, dear good friend, since the moment when you & your Auguste took the decision, the too cruel and unfortunately too wise decision, to distance yourself from a family so tender & so cherished! [the addressee of the letter, included in the proscription order of July 1815, had left for the United States with his son Auguste, future Marshal of the Second Empire]. We, who are still much more attached to you by choice and affection than by alliance, have shared all the alarms of your nearest and dearest, and still share their regrets... We still hope that better advice will revoke, or at least soften, the severe measures that are bringing so many families to tears and maintaining a general anxiety so contrary to the return of tranquility, and therefore so opposed to the true interests of those whom we claim to serve by employing them... I leave the pen to my husband, whom I leave to go and see Sophie, who has come to Paris on business - it will be the first time I kiss her since her husband's departure [Sophie Guesnon de Bonneuil, sister of Regnaud's wife, and wife of the poet and playwright Antoine-Vincent Arnault, who was close to Napoleon Bonaparte under the Consulate and was included in the proscription order of July 1815]. My heart aches to think of it, and it aches even more, dear friends, as I bid you a sad farewell, but it must be done. I embrace you with all my soul. Farewell then!" Jean-Baptiste Delambre added: "My wife has expressed our common feelings to you, my dear colleague, and it remains for me to give you an account of the commission you entrusted to me as secretary of the class of sciences [at the Institut, to which Regnaud had belonged since 1803, in the class of Moral and Political Sciences]. THE VOLUME OF THE NEW AMERICAN SOCIETY WAS PUT ON THE DESK AT THE OPENING OF THE SESSION WITHOUT ME KNOWING HOW IT CAME OR THAT IT RECEIVED A LETTER FROM YOU [Regnaud was in contact with the Literary and philosophical society of New York, which had been founded in 1814 and had just published the first volume of its Transactions in 1815]. I announced this to the class in the ordinary way, reading the title of the work and the table of memoirs it contained. As I turned the pages, I came across your letter, and immediately read what it said about the Institut. What you said about this body and your attachment to its members awakened in the hearts of all your colleagues, and particularly those who have the advantage of knowing you more intimately, all those feelings that absence cannot diminish. The noble and touching way in which you expressed them recalled those times when your eloquence gave such splendor to the public sessions over which you presided. We still hope to see them revived. We hope your absence will not be long. Above all, we hope so. Since your departure, your class has held no public sessions... We've been hearing all kinds of nonsense about the existence of the Institut. There was talk of re-establishing the Academies. Today, it is said that the three literary Academies will remain united under their present title, and that the arts class will be cut off to form a separate Academy. You have to know how to make yourself, in the words of one of your former colleagues, from a lesser misfortune a shadow of happiness [quote from Antoine-Marin Le Mierre's play Hypermnestre]. It is believed that the ordinance signed eleven months ago [under the Hundred Days], which circumstances had caused to be suppressed, is about to be published. It appointed to several positions that it considered vacant. The January law necessarily increases the number of these positions to be given. It remains to be seen whether the Government will appoint to them itself, or whether it will leave the right of presentation to the classes. I am convinced that in this particular case, they would not regret it very much, and that if changes are prescribed, they will be spared the sorrow of cooperating in them. The Directoire had not been so sparing. Our absent colleagues, though replaced, have never been deemed foreigners; they have all returned to the Institut. Why should the Republic of Letters feel the aftershocks of political upheavals, and I congratulate myself on having always followed the peaceful career of science without distraction! [The law of January 12, 1816, condemning regicides to perpetual exile, concerned several members of the Institut, and the institution was entirely destroyed.