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cahnI'm trying to use my other account at least occasionally so I posted about my Yuletide gifts there, including the salon-relevant 12k fic that features Fritz, Heinrich, Voltaire, Fredersdorf, Saint Germain, Caroline Daum (Fredersdorf's wife), and Groundhog Day tropes! (Don't need to know canon.)
Transcription attempts
Date: 2023-01-28 11:51 pm (UTC)I'm going to guess that this is "cependant", which means "however" and occurs every other sentence in the French book I'm currently reading (Louis XI bio).
l'oblies event
My French is admittedly not great, and my handwriting-reading is worse, but I read this as one word, a third person plural of "obliger": "oblige..ent": Could it be a badly or old-fashioned spelled or written "obligeront", "obligèrent", or "obligeraient"?
sau?
Could this be "saurait"? Admittedly, I think my German may be interfering here by supplying "know", but hey, sometimes the two languages have things in common! [ETA: And, duh, this was likely written by a native speaker of German anyway.]
Ah, wait, I think I'm getting closer by adding some punctuation:
que quelque bonne volonté que le Roy saurait avoir pour lui, d'autres despenses indispensables l'obligeraient, cependant, d'lui du qu'il faudrit qu'il ont patience jusqu'au Sa. Majeste saurait ?iver quelques ? favorable pour l'aider
That whatever goodwill the King knows to have for him* [Keith], some other necessary expenses oblige him [Fritz?], nevertheless, from him [Keith?] that it is necessary that he [Keith] have patience until His Majesty will know [infinitive] some [noun] favorable to help him.
* I.e., "Despite the goodwill that the King has for him..."
"Expenses" is why "oblige" is in the plural! I was confused because I was trying to make "bonne volonté" the subject. But of course Fritz is claiming he has other necessary expenses that prevent him from doing anything right now.
The missing bit at the end I'm going to guess is along the lines of "Fritz will know when circumstances allow him to give Keith something to help him."
Which was apparently the case, because we have Hanway's story of Fritz surprising him with money just a few months later! (It's amazing that we read that story back in the first couple months of salon, and three years later, we have the context!)
Okay, I reserve the right to retract any of these readings tomorrow, and I hope we can supplement them further. But at least I'm now reasonably sure it's saying "Not now, hopefully later." Which is what I *suspected* all along, but I'm much more confident now, and we're much closer to an exact reading now, thanks to you!
ETA: And, tongue-in-cheek, this feels very relevant right now:
Despite the goodwill which the Royal Detective has toward the Royal Reader, other necessary reading material (such as puzzling out handwriting, and German and French practice, and archive catalogs for finding material to order, and Louis XIV gossip) requires of Selena that she have patience until the Royal Detective will know when she has time to read and reply to the Byzantine tales.
;)
Re: Transcription attempts
Date: 2023-01-29 02:46 pm (UTC)I spent much of the night struggling with "ont" being a plural, and with the "o" looking like a "p" to both of us, and a short form did occur to me: "prend", because that "t" looks to me like it could be a "d".
Then it would be "prend patience", which French wiktionary assures me is a thing. I'm not *sure* about the indicative there, but hey, what little French grammar I had is decades behind me.
I also remembered belatedly that "ai" is usually written "oi" in this period, so my proposed "saurait" would likely be "sauroit", which I think fits the handwriting better.
Re: Transcription attempts
Date: 2023-01-29 05:51 pm (UTC)