Pensées

No book-club question arises for a 1670 book, but the reprint trap here is unusually sharp because the impostor carries the same year and the same publisher. A SECOND edition appeared in March 1670 from Guillaume Desprez: some copies are styled "Seconde édition" on the title and others carry no such statement at all, the unmarked ones probably preceding the marked, so the absence of a "seconde édition" line does NOT establish a first. Identify the March issue by collation and by the achevé: it has 40 preliminary leaves and 358 pages with famously irregular pagination (1-312, 307-330, 312-334), caused by the late insertion of a gathering for chapter XXXI that had been omitted, and it carries corrections and punctuation revisions plus the suppression of a passage on justice made at Arnauld's request. Typographic tells reported in the March issue include p. 9 reading "c'est ce que je doit", p. 89 lacking "du", and the signature on p. 305 marked "Dd" instead of "Cc". Against this, the January first edition collates (41) ff., 365 pp., (10) ff. and its privilege verso reads "pour la première fois". Later Port-Royal editions run to 1678, and Lyon counterfeits are identified by the absence of the Collège des Quatre-Nations vignette.