HUSSON (Claude-Robert).

La Parfaite oraison, ou la vraie manière de méditer et de prier avec fruit. Nancy, Pierre Antoine, 1763. In-8, green morocco, gilt filets and roulette, coat of arms in the centre of the first plate, crowned CE figure on the second, smooth spine decorated, inner lace, gilt edges (Period binding). First edition, published in Nancy. It is dedicated to Claire-Elisabeth de Choiseul, whose woodcut arms appear at the head of the dedication. Claude-Robert Husson, a cordelier in Nancy, had been provincial of Île-de-France and general definitor of the Franciscan order. He also published a historical Eloge de Callot in 1766. Precious copy in green morocco with the arms and the figure of the dedicatee, Claire-Élisabeth de Choiseul-Beaupré (1720-1801), last abbess of the Benedictine abbey of Sainte-Glossinde in Metz from 1761 to 1792. Daughter of the Marquis de Choiseul, she had been a student at the Royal House of Saint-Cyr before taking holy orders at Sainte-Glossinde, which she left only from 1755 to 1761 to become perpetual prioress at the Abbey of Charenton in Berry. In 1792, she was expelled with her nuns by the revolutionaries and the abbey was transformed into a depository. It was returned to worship in 1802 and has been the seat of the bishopric of Metz since that date. The copy belonged to Madame de Saillÿ, a nun of the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Eustase de Vergaville in Moselle, with a handwritten ex-libris on the title, followed by this ex-dono: she made a cadot [sic] of it to her niece de Saillÿ the elder. One endpaper has a handwritten ex-dono signed Delphine Benois, dated 1832. La Parfaite oraison is the only one with the arms of Claire-Élisabeth de Choiseul-Beaupré known to Olivier, who quotes and reproduces the irons of the copy of Jules Florange (1863-1937), numismatist, historian and archaeologist of Sierck, in Moselle. From the Penard y Fernandez library (1960, n°32), with bookplate and stamp at the bottom of the title. Very discreet restorations on a spine and a corner point. OHR, 814, fers 1 and 2.