This is fascinating! Thank you!! And that makes total sense, that Voltaire may have looked at it rather differently than Graffigny herself, and also that it makes perfect sense for her not to have taken him up on it. I do like that it seems to imply that he didn't have any sort of hard feelings towards her, at least by that time (regardless what Émilie may have thought), and I like the headcanon that maybe he felt guilty about how it ended up.

Graffigny remained firm and in each subsequent edition of her novel kept her ending intact, and she refused to write a sequel of her own as well.

Okay, this is AWESOME.

This caused as many as five unauthorized sequels being written in which the heroine gets duly married and baptized.

LOLOLOLOL I love reading about historical fanfic! :D

That letter, though :( Somehow seeing the actual manuscript brings home even more how awful it was.