[FACÉTIES]. Histoire comique du roy des masques. [Paris, s.n - Lot 37

[FACÉTIES]. Histoire comique du roy des masques. [Paris, s.n., 1724]. Bound with: Le Sanglant combat de Mardi-Gras et de Carème dans la plaine de Vaugirard. S.l.n.d. 2 works bound in a small in-8 volume (156x100 mm), havana morocco, five-ribbed spine, gilt title and date, cold fillet on covers, gilt fillet on edges, double gilt fillet inside, gilt edges (late 19th century binding). Interesting reunion of two exceedingly rare facéties. A priori, there is only one copy of the first in public hands: in the Musée Médard. It is described by Paul Lacroix in the Bulletin du bibliophile of 1863: "The approval of the censor Passart is dated January 26, 1723. This censor, whose mission was to examine all pamphlets, canards and loose sheets, by order of the Lieutenant of Police, was none other than the famous Abbé Cherrier, author of the Polissonniana and so many comic, gay and facetious plays. Before becoming a censor, he had often got into trouble with the police for his clandestine publications, and had often slept in the Bastille. He never lost his taste for composing naughtiness, and he himself approved of the anonymous gaudrioles he printed with tacit permission. His most famous opuscule, entitled Le Chapeau pointu, has not yet been found, which proves that the entire edition was seized and pillaged as soon as the first copies were sold under the table. L'Histoire du roy des masques, which may well also be a composition by Abbé Cherrier, had no dangerous character and should not be suppressed. It is a grotesque personification of Carnival. The birth of the King of Masks borrows a few features from that of Gargantua: "As soon as he was out of his mother's womb, instead of needing to suckle like the other children of men, he needed no other nurse than the pint, no other cradle than the table, no other bikini than the tablecloths, no other swaddling clothes than the napkins; in a word, he suddenly became perfect." After the story, which ends with the death of the king, who expires from grief when he sees that the wine is about to run out, we find a verse Dialogue between this king and his cupbearer, who pours him a drink in extremis and sings couplets in honor of the juice of the trellis." The second is known only from an 18th-century manuscript in the Arsenal. A magnificent, finely bound copy from the libraries of Auguste Veinant (1855, I, no. 788), Morel (Lyon, 1873, no. 362) and Edouard Moura (1932, no. 822), with his bookplate on "Les Éclusettes" leather. A few small stains on the upper cover. Barely faded color on spine.