BOSSUET (Jacques-Bénigne).

Oraison funèbre de très-haut et très-puissant prince Louis de Bourbon, prince de Condé, premier prince du sang, prononcée dans l'église de Nostre-Dame de Paris le 10. jour de mars 1687. Paris, Sébastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1687. In-4, jansenist red morocco, fillets on the edges, interior lace, gilt edges on marbling (Trautz-Bauzonnet). First edition of one of Bossuet's most famous funeral orations. It is decorated with the arms of the Prince of Condé on the title, engraved by Cornelis Vermeulen after Pierre Sevin, a beautiful vignette on the head of the book by Joseph Parrocel, interpreted by Jean-Louis Roullet, and a large unsigned cul-de-lampe. A very wide-margined copy bound in jansenist morocco by Trautz-Bauzonnet. The Rochebilière copy measures 239 mm high, this one 260 mm. Attached is a beautiful autograph letter signed by Bossuet to Madame du Mans, a nun of the Benedictine abbey of Jouarre, dated Germigny, September 26, 1693, 2 pp. small in-4, published in the Lachat edition of Bossuet's Complete Works (XXVIII, 327-328). It is a letter of direction of conscience to one of his penitents: I am astonished, my Daughter, after all the things I have told you, that you should start your confession again. Don't do it again, and don't talk about the past to anyone, either in or out of confession. I have nothing more to say to you about austerities. Mortify your own will, govern your heart, and make yourself its mistress... From the library of Henri Prost (1937, n°12). Upper hinge and corners rubbed, mending in the outer margin of the first few leaves. Tchemerzine, I, 858 - Rochebilière, n°226.