Explication de l'énigme du roman intitulé : Histoire de la conjuration de Louis-Philippe-Joseph d'Orléans - Exemplaire du roi Louis-Philippe

Vérédishtad [Paris], chez les marchands de nouveautés, undated [before 1814]. Three parts in four octavo volumes.

Contemporary Bradel-style bindings in full aubergine boards imitating straight-grain morocco, smooth spines decorated with gilt fillets, rolls and floral tools, with the crowned cipher of Louis-Philippe d'Orléans at the head. Entirely untrimmed. The final two volumes remain unopened. Complete with the errata leaves bound at the end of each part.

Spines uniformly faded, headcaps slightly depressed, with some damage to the corners of the third and fourth volumes. A few leaves browned or foxed.

Preserved in two modern burgundy straight-grain half-morocco boxes, with gilt-ruled smooth spines.

An important copy bound for Louis-Philippe, then Duke of Orléans, with his crowned cipher in gilt at the head of each spine. Following his accession to the throne, the four title pages were stamped "Bibliothèque du Roi - Palais-Royal", the mark used for his personal library between 1830 and 1848.

A manuscript note on the front endleaf of the first volume orders that the work be placed "in the medal cabinet, by o[rder] of the King". The wording clearly indicates a special reserve within the Palais-Royal library. Whether intended for precious books, politically sensitive works, or both, the instruction demonstrates Louis-Philippe's wish to keep this copy apart from the ordinary shelves.

First edition, of great rarity, of the Explication de l'énigme du roman intitulé : Histoire de la conjuration de Louis-Philippe-Joseph d'Orléans, Jacques-Marie Rouzet, Comte de Folmon's refutation of the violent pamphlet published by Galart de Montjoie against Philippe Égalité in 1796.

The work was printed at the expense of Marie-Adélaïde de Bourbon-Penthièvre, Dowager Duchess of Orléans, under the fictitious imprint "Vérédishtad" and by the same "dealers in new publications" named in the book to which it replied. According to Tourneux, "not a single copy of this book, printed at the expense of the Duchess of Orléans before 1814, was distributed during her lifetime". The Princess returned to France at the Restoration but died in 1821 without authorising the circulation of this defence of her husband. Tourneux, IV, 21572; Quérard, VIII, 258; Brunet, II, 1136.

Montjoie had portrayed Philippe Égalité as one of the principal hidden architects of the Revolution. His three-volume Histoire de la conjuration de Louis-Philippe-Joseph d'Orléans, published in 1796, transformed the political networks surrounding the Palais-Royal, the ambitions attributed to the Duke and the activities of Masonic societies into elements of a vast conspiracy against the monarchy. The work retained its polemical force for decades and was reprinted during the reign of the accused man's son, notably by Dentu in 1834.

The task of answering Montjoie fell to the man who was then sharing the Duchess's life. Born in Toulouse in 1743, Jacques-Marie Rouzet was a lawyer and professor of law before being elected to the National Convention for Haute-Garonne. At the trial of Louis XVI, he called for an appeal to the people and voted for confinement. Associated with the Girondins, he was arrested after signing the protest against the events of 31 May and 2 June 1793.

It was in prison that he became close to the Duchess of Orléans, herself detained following the execution of Philippe Égalité. The Duke of Nivernais is said to have recommended Rouzet to her as an adviser, and their relationship was never subsequently broken. After Thermidor, Rouzet resumed his seat in the Convention and was later elected to the Council of Five Hundred. When the Bourbons were expelled from France in 1797, he accompanied the Duchess to Spain and settled with her in Barcelona. She appointed him her chancellor and secured for him the title of Comte de Folmon.

Their enduring intimacy gave rise to a tradition that they had married secretly. Kuscinski, citing Madame Cavaignac, reports that Rouzet "was said eventually to have married her, which almost completely estranged the mother from her children". The conditional form remains essential, but Rouzet's place beside the Princess is beyond doubt. They returned to France together in 1814. Following his death in 1820, he was buried at Dreux in the vaults of the Orléans family chapel, in accordance with the Duchess's wishes.

The Explication de l'énigme is therefore more than an episode in the polemical literature of the Revolution. In Rouzet's hands, the refutation of Montjoie became an act of rehabilitation, conceived within the Duchess's exile and financed by her to defend her husband's memory. Yet the woman who commissioned and paid for the work chose not to publish it. This contradiction gives the book its peculiar tension: an apologia intended as a public answer to an accusation, it was withheld within the private circle of the family it sought to vindicate.

The history of the present copy extends that silence. Bound with the cipher of Louis-Philippe, son of Philippe Égalité and the Duchess, it was later incorporated into the King's Library at the Palais-Royal. The order to place it in the "medal cabinet" reveals the special treatment accorded by the sovereign to this defence of his father, written by his mother's companion and long withheld from the public.

Its provenance transforms the four volumes into a family archive. The book passed from the Duchess, who secretly financed its printing, to the son who preserved a copy in the reserve of his library. Between them stand two difficult and conflicting memories: that of Philippe Égalité, denounced as a conspirator and regicide, and that of his widow, determined to have the accusations refuted but unwilling to submit the refutation to public judgment.

An exceptional copy from the library of Louis-Philippe, in contemporary bindings bearing his cipher, entirely untrimmed and partly unopened. An edition withheld from circulation, a posthumous defence of Philippe Égalité and a record of Rouzet's intimacy with the Duchess of Orléans, this secret family book passed from the mother's exile into the personal reserve of her son after he became King.