[Les Délices, 11 February 1759

Sir,

I learn the obligations which I owe, or rather which religion, good order, and public tranquillity owe to you.
I am assured, and I do not doubt it, that you employ your talents and your idea of justice in proscribing a libel secretly printed in your town; the editor, named Grasset, is already greatly suspected, since he is known to have robbed the brothers Cramer at Geneva; and his criminal suit has been commenced. It would matter little if supposititious works were imputed to me in this libel; that would only be a piece of typographical roguery to which one is sufficiently accustomed and which is not worthy of attention; but there is a letter on my lord Bolingbroke which formally attacks religion. Whoever composed it is greatly to blame; he who spreads it abroad is still more to blame, and it is a punishable calumny to impute it to me.

The pretended letter written from Lausanne to m. Tiriot at Paris is not my letter at all; I never wrote such nonsense as that which has been printed.

The reply to this pretended letter by a society of literary men of Geneva is an outrage to the state of Geneva; it is an anonymous work under a fictitious name, and such publications are not permitted at Geneva.

The supposed quarrel with m. Vernet, professor of theology, is another insult to this professor, with whom I have never quarrelled, and whom I esteem and love.

That which concerns the memory of the late Saurin is a scandal which the wisdom of your Academy wishes to stifle, and which the sovereign council of Berne does not desire brought up again.

Your prudence seconds the government perfectly; I do not doubt that your colleagues think as you do; I present my respectful acknowledgements to them, and return to you, sir, in particular the most tender and the most sincere thanks. I wish you and all your family good health. I hope to have the honour of thanking you in person very shortly, and assuring you of the sentiments full of esteem and respect with which I have the honour to be, sir, your very humble and very obedient servant,]

Voltaire gentilhomme ord, du roy, comte de Tournay