[Nicolas-Pierre-Henri de MONTFAUCON DE VILLARS]. Le Comte de Gabalis, ou Entretiens sur les sciences secretes… Paris, Claude Barbin, 1670. In-12, maroquin rouge sang, doubles filets sur les plats, dos à 5 nerfs orné de même, filet doré intérieur, tranches dorées (A. Lobstein). 12mo: 2 leaves, 327 pages, in a lovely full calf in blood-red by A Lobstein (signed). Caillet, III-7701 / Cioranescu, II-50058 / Dorbon, 3144 /// (2f.)-327. From which: Two satirical anonymous occult texts taking aim at Rosicrucianism. The first is written in the form of a dialogue between a cabalist (Comte de Gabalis) and a skeptic. The five "entretiens", or interviews, attempt to discount the Paracelsian doctrine on elementary spirits and parody alchemy, divination, and astrology. Whether deliberate or not, the book revealed many secrets closely held in the Rosicrucian and Jansenist circles, and for this slight, Villars was murdered 3 years after publication of the first edition (1670). The second text purports to be of the same authorship, but this would be impossible as the first edition, offered here, was published 45 years after Villars' death. (Brunet and other bibliographers have ascribed it to Antoine Androl.) The narrative piggybacks off Comte de Gabalis, describing and denouncing the elemental spirits of genies and gnomes.