Lot n° 133
Estimation :
15000 - 20000
EUR
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Result
: 19 500EUR
DIDEROT. - GERBIER (Pierre-Jean-Baptiste)
Question de savoir si les Libraires de Paris ont rempli avec fidélité tous les engagements envers les souscripteurs de l'Encyclopédie. In Jure. [1772]. Manuscript in-4 (247 x 185 mm) of 38 pages, in sheets, preserved under a fragment of a period folded in two.
Very precious autograph manuscript, with numerous erasures and corrections, of the plea of Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Gerbier, the lawyer defending Diderot and the booksellers of the Encyclopaedia, in the lawsuit brought by Luneau de Boisjermain, one of the subscribers of the work.
This is the only existing trace of the preparation of this defence, which was decisive in the final victory of the philosopher and his publishers.
Diderot played a central role in the elaboration of this plea, a role that has remained unknown to this day. The defence of the lawyer Gerbier was organised in close collaboration with the philosopher and his arguments were taken directly from the work Au Public et aux Magistrats, written by Diderot against Luneau de Boisjermain but which his friends, and in particular Gerbier, dissuaded him from publishing. This text is known only from two privately printed copies: the one that was among Diderot's books and papers, bought en bloc by Catherine II the Great, now in the St Petersburg library, and another copy discovered in 2008.
In the edition of Diderot's correspondence, published by G. Roth and J. Varloot in 1965, there are a few copies of this work. Varloot in 1965, there are some letters addressed by Gerbier to Diderot which shed light on the genesis of this manuscript and the role played by Diderot.
Here are some particularly significant passages:
I am afraid to compromise you by wanting to take advantage of your address to the Public and to the Magistrates for my cause...
Your little memoir, Sir, is a masterpiece... if you decide to suppress it, I am determined not to plead anything else. It would be very interesting for us if it were to appear because it is decisive [...] But the executioner will take revenge. He will demand the suppression of your memoir [...] please suspend the distribution of this delicious work. I will let you know when it is time. You want to help us. We must save the sledgehammer for the moment when we reach the judgment...
I thought of giving in to you. Your letter had half convinced me but I let my imagination, inflamed by yours, rest... I reread your Opinion which gave me as much pleasure as the first time. Luneau, in reading it, will froth at the mouth [...] You who love your rest, you will be put into play, perhaps attacked, called to justice [...]. In truth I will never consent to your making such an indiscretion. In the name of the friendship you have shown me and of that which I have vowed to you, remain calm, let me do it, I will avenge you by winning my case. That is your whole object. Well, the way to lose it is to publish your notice. The booksellers will be forgotten in order to think of the author, and a quarrel about money will end up becoming a quarrel about religion...
You are an admirable man. Your courage resembles your spirit, they have no limits. I doubted your submission. I will not avenge you on Luneau by paying you the public tribute of praise that my heart offers you in secret. There would be a risk to the cause. But I will avenge you by making him lose it. I will take advantage of everything you have said and written, because it is all excellent. I will add to it legal arguments that you are made to ignore. But if you could send me during the day some ideas on the character of the man of letters, on his taste for peace, on that tranquillity in the bosom of which only his genius can exalt itself, you would help me to tear from this odious character the cloak with which he adorns himself [this moral portrait of the man of letters that Gerbier asks Diderot to unmask Luneau de Boisjermain will constitute the final part of the plea].
Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Gerbier, born in Rennes in 1725 and died in 1788, was one of the greatest lawyers of the Parliament of Paris, which earned him the nickname "Eagle of the Bar". When he had to plead, the news immediately spread outside; the crowd besieged the doors of the Grand Chamber; the lords of the court, the men of letters [...] ran to the Parliament to hear him. When a king or a foreign prince came to Paris, he would not fail to come to the Palais, attracted by the reputation of the eagle of the bar [...] (H. Thiéblain, Éloge de Gerbier, 1875).
The five volumes of manuscripts of his pleadings were collected by Hérault de Séchelles and bought around 1840 by the Paris lawyers' library; they disappeared in 1871, in the fire that ravaged this library during the Commune.
This manuscript of the plea he made in the trial of the Encyclopédie seems to be the only surviving testimony of his work as a lawyer.
It comes from the archives
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