Pétition pour des villageois que l’on empêche de danser

An impeccable stylist, an admirer of the Provinciales and a disciple of Voltaire, “Paul-Louis, vigneron” renewed the French tradition of political pamphleteering with incisive formulas. Settled as a winegrower in his native Touraine, he studied and translated the classical authors and set about writing the small masterpieces of eloquence and pure language that are his Pamphlets: “Gendarmes have multiplied in France; even more than fiddlers, though less necessary for dancing. We could do without them at village festivals, and to tell the truth it is not we who ask for them: but government is everywhere today, and this ubiquity extends even to our dances, where not a step is taken without the prefect wishing to be informed of it, so as to report it to the minister.”

This famous pamphlet by Paul-Louis Courier was “addressed to the deputies to obtain the annulment of a prefectoral order issued at the request of a young priest ‘burning with zeal,’ forbidding the peasants to dance on Sundays in the square at Azay; it was seized on 12 August” (En français dans le texte, 233).

Courier turned the situation to his advantage and denounced the measure with a velvet ferocity that ultimately allowed him to escape any judicial prosecution, though not the harassment and persecution that followed. During one of his absences, the police searched La Chavonnière from top to bottom to confiscate any copies of this Pétition pour des villageois… found there, which explains its rarity. Threatened with a punishment worse than that inflicted after his previous trial, Courier got off lightly: the judges found no grounds for prosecution in this pamphlet, and he was acquitted.

Some wear to the wrappers, and foxing at the head.