Sainte-Marthe, Plaidoyez de messire Nicolas de Corberon, Paris, 1693, contemporary brown morocco, plausibly a presentation copy from the author

SAINTE-MARTHE, ABEL DE. Plaidoyez de messire Nicolas de Corberon chevalier, seigneur de Torvilliers, conseiller du roy en ses conseils, avocat general au Parlement de Metz, et ensuite maistre des requestes ordinaires de l'Hôtel de Sa Majesté. Paris: Charles de Sercy, Guillaume de Luynes & Étienne Michallet, 1693

FIRST EDITION OF AN EXTREMELY RARE WORK, with just one institutional copy listed on USTC. The presence of the arms of Sainte-Marthe on the binding suggests that this is VERY PLAUSIBLY A PRESENTATION COPY from Abel de Sainte-Marthe, fils (1627-1707), curator of the Royal Library of Fontainebleau and compiler of the present work, to the owner of the arms at the centre of the covers. This work is a collection of pleas in civil cases, the majority of which relate to the legal work of Nicolas de Corberon (1608-50), with a dozen relating to the work of the compiler's father, Abel de Sainte-Marthe, Seigneur d'Estrepied (1566-1652). The civil pleas cover a wide range of topics, including questions such as "Does bad breath and a rotting bone in the nose of a husband constitute grounds for the dissolution of a marriage?" The volume concludes with Sainte-Marthe, fils' Discours au Roy, sur le Retablissement de la Bibliotheque Royale de Fontainebleau... 1688 (with a separate title-page, but continuing the pagination from the prior volume, thus not a bibliographically separate work). The Discours, first published in 1668, retraces the history of royal libraries, and beseeches the King to re-establish the library at Fontainebleau at the expense of the Royal Library in Paris.