MUSIC. - MÉREAUX (Nicolas-Jean Le Froid de). - Lot 105

MUSIC. - MÉREAUX (Nicolas-Jean Le Froid de). La Ressource comique ou La Pièce à deux acteurs, in one act. Paris, Au bureau d'abonnement musical [...] et aux adresses ordinaires de musique, s.d. Large in-4, green vellum, gilt supra-libris on a large red morocco label on the first cover, gilt title on the spine, red edges (Binding of the period). Musical score entirely engraved on copper, text, lyrics and music, including the title. This copy belonged to the Princesse de Lamballe (1749-1792). A confidante and close friend of Marie-Antoinette, for whom she was superintendent of her household, the Princesse de Lamballe, née Marie-Thérèse de Savoie-Carignan, shared the queen's taste for opera and music. Other scores and librettos are known to have belonged to her, similarly bound in green vellum with a large red morocco label bearing her gilded bookplate on the front cover. The Princesse de Lamballe's fate was tragic: imprisoned in the prison of La Force, she was brutally dragged out in September 1792 during the famous massacres, decapitated, her body mutilated, and her head displayed at the end of a pike beneath the windows of the Temple prison, where the royal family was imprisoned. Quentin-Bauchart devotes a few pages to this princess in Les Femmes bibliophiles de France, t. II, pp. 217-224. Minor 10 cm crack to one jaw, minor restoration to one cover and one corner.