Kwaw wrote,
Le Petit Escamoteur, published as being available from the author, at Saint-Sauver's address -- is testament also to the biographer's description of JdS-S as a practioner d'escamotage. The fact that it was also combined with Deroy's Le maniere de tireur des carts, ou le cartomancien in the Pigoreau edition also that card and magic tricks were viewed as belonging together with cartomancy as 'parlour amusements' (oracles for the ladies perhaps, tricks for the men?).
For the Deroy, are you talking about
Le Tireur de cartes, ou le petit cartomancien of, ‘an V’ (1796-1797), published by Deroy, whose author is not suggested (DDD p. 98), but which was republished the following year ("an VI") in combination with
Le Petit Escamoteur and provided with Saint-Sauveur's address on the title page and also the address of the publisher Pigoreau? (DDD p. 274, note 65). I am not trying to catch you up, but just making sure there isn't some book I don't know about.
Also, there is a kind of odd possible inference, from DDD's comments. There is the suggestion, true or false, that the editor (DDD's word) of the "an V" work knew Etteilla personally, because he is republishing, from 1771, "a short work of some folios that fell into his hands" in 1772, such that he "visited Etteilla to 'ask his permission to inform the public'"(still quoting DDD p. 98).
Then in footnote 65 it is said that Pigoreau republished this work the next year (an VI) along with
Petit Escamoteur, and the title page shows Saint-Sauveur's address.
It is thus fairly clear that Saint-Sauveur is meant to be the author/editor of the previously unattributable
Le Tireur de cartes, ou le petit cartomancien (or is it just the
Petit Escamoteur?). The way in which that book, unlike others, is a "compilation of different methods of card-reading" reads rather like the style of Saint-Sauveur's reports on the peoples of various lands.
If so, it would seem that someone, Saint-Saveur or an editor he (probably) is re-editing, is (anonymously) claiming to have met Etteilla personally. It seems to DDD (still p. 98) from the program of works that is then supplied--most of them with titles allusively derogating what is likely the horrible censors--that this account (of projected works) was originally written in around 1782-1783 (after first reading Etteilla in 1772, when Saint-Sauveur would have been around 14 and I imagine still in Canada). Could this writer be the anonymous Saint-Saveur (a follower of Etteilla since age 14, at last meeting the great man age 25). or is the writer the anonymous editor whose work St.-Sauveur (probably) is republishing/re-editing/borrowing from? I suspect the latter, but it would be especially interesting if it were the former.