THE CONFESSSIONS

BOOK XI

[1761]

  ALTHOUGH Julie, which for a long time had been in the press, was not
yet published at the end of the year 1760, the work already began to
make a great noise. Madam de Luxembourg had spoken of it at court, and
Madam d'Houdetot at Paris. The latter had obtained from me
permission for Saint Lambert to read the manuscript to the King of
Poland, who had been delighted with it. Duclos, to whom I had also
given the perusal of the work, had spoken of it at the academy. All
Paris was impatient to see the novel; the booksellers of the Rue
Saint-Jacques, and that of the Palais-Royal, were beset with people
who came to inquire when it was to be published. It was at length
brought out, and the success it had answered, contrary to custom, to
the impatience with which it had been expected. The dauphiness, who
was one of the first who read it, spoke of it to M. de Luxembourg as a
ravishing performance. The opinions of men of letters differed from
each other, but in those of every other class approbation was general,
especially with the women, who became so intoxicated with the book and
the author, that there was not one in high life with whom I might
not have succeeded had I undertaken to do it. Of this I have such
proofs as I will not commit to paper, and which without the aid of
experience, authorized my opinion. It is singular that the book should
have succeeded better in France than in the rest of Europe, although
the French, both men and women, are severely treated in it. Contrary
to my expectation it was least successful in Switzerland, and most
so in Paris. Do friendship, love and virtue reign in this capital more
than elsewhere? Certainly not; but there reigns in it an exquisite
sensibility which transports the heart to their image, and makes us
cherish in others the pure, tender and virtuous sentiments we no
longer possess. Corruption is everywhere the same; virtue and morality
no longer exist in Europe; but if the least love of them still
remains, it is in Paris that this will be found.*

  * I wrote this in 1769.

  In the midst of so many prejudices and feigned passions, the real
sentiments of nature are not to be distinguished from others, unless
we well know to analyze the human heart. A very nice discrimination,
not to be acquired except by the education of the world, is
necessary to feel the finesses of the heart, if I dare use the
expression, with which this work abounds. I do not hesitate to place
the fourth part of it upon an equality with the Princess of Cleves;
nor to assert that had these two works been read nowhere but in the
provinces, their merit would never have been discovered. It must
not, therefore, be considered as a matter of astonishment, that the
greatest success of my work was at court. It abounds with lively but
veiled touches of the pencil; which could not but give pleasure there,
because the persons who frequent it are more accustomed than others to
discover them. A distinction must, however, be made. The work is by no
means proper for the species of men of wit who gave nothing but
cunning, who possess no other kind of discernment than that which
penetrates evil, and see nothing where good only is to be found. If,
for instance, Julie had been published in a certain country which I
have in my mind, I am convinced it would not have been read through by
a single person, and the work would have been stifled in its birth.
  I have collected most of the letters written to me on the subject of
this publication, and deposited them, tied up together, in the hands
of Madam de Nadillac. Should this collection ever be given to the
world, very singular things will be seen, and an opposition of
opinion, which shows what it is to have to do with the public. The
thing least kept in view, and which will ever distinguish it from
every other work, is the simplicity of the subject and the
continuation of the interest, which, confined to three persons, is
kept up throughout six volumes, without episode, romantic adventure,
or anything malicious either in the persons or actions. Diderot
complimented Richardson on the prodigious variety of his portraits and
the multiplicity of his persons. In fact, Richardson has the merit
of having well characterized them all; but with respect to their
number, he has that in common with the most insipid writers of novels,
who attempt to make up for the sterility of their ideas by multiplying
persons and adventures. It is easy to awaken the attention by
incessantly presenting unheard of adventures and new faces, which pass
before the imagination as the figures in a magic lanthorn do before
the eye; but to keep up that attention to the same objects, and
without the aid of the wonderful, is certainly more difficult; and if,
everything else being equal, the simplicity of the subject adds to the
beauty of the work, the novels of Richardson, superior in so many
other respects, cannot in this be compared to mine. I know it is
already forgotten, and the cause of its being so; but it will be taken
up again.
  All my fear was that, by an extreme simplicity, the narrative
would be fatiguing, and that it was not sufficiently interesting to
engage the attention throughout the whole. I was relieved from this
apprehension by a circumstance which alone was more flattering to my
pride than all the compliments made me upon the work.
  It appeared at the beginning of the carnival. A hawker carried it to
the Princess of Talmont,* on the evening of a ball night at the opera.
After supper the princess dressed herself for the ball, and until
the hour of going there, took up the new novel. At midnight she
ordered the horses to be put into the carriage, and continued to read.
The servant returned to tell her the horses were put to; she made no
answer. Her people perceiving she forgot herself, came to tell her
it was two o'clock. "There is yet no hurry," replied the princess,
still reading on. Some time afterwards her watch having stopped, she
rang to know the hour. She was told it was four o'clock. "That being
the case," she said, "it is too late to go to the ball; let the horses
be taken off." She undressed herself and passed the rest of the
night in reading.

  * It was not the princess, but some other lady, whose name I do
not know, but I have been assured of the fact.

  Ever since I came to the knowledge of this circumstance, I have
had a constant desire to see the lady, not only to know from herself
whether or not what I have related be exactly true, but because I have
always thought it impossible to be interested in so lively a manner in
the happiness of Julia, without having that sixth and moral sense with
which so few hearts are endowed, and without which no person
whatever can understand the sentiments of mine.
  What rendered the women so favorable to me was, their being
persuaded that I had written my own history, and was myself the hero
of the romance. This opinion was so firmly established that Madam de
Polignac wrote to Madam de Verdelin, begging she would prevail upon me
to show her the portrait of Julia. Everybody thought it was impossible
so strongly to express sentiments without having felt them, or thus to
describe the transports of love, unless immediately from the
feelings of the heart. This was true, and I certainly wrote the
novel during the time my imagination was inflamed to ecstasy; but they
who thought real objects necessary to this effect were deceived, and
far from conceiving to what a degree I can at will produce it for
imaginary beings. Without Madam d'Houdetot, and the recollection of
a few circumstances in my youth, the amours I have felt and
described would have been with fairy nymphs. I was unwilling either to
confirm or destroy an error which was advantageous to me. The reader
may see in the preface a dialogue, which I had printed separately,
in what manner I left the public in suspense. Rigorous people say, I
ought to have explicitly declared the truth. For my part I see no
reason for this, nor anything that could oblige me to it, and am of
opinion there would have been more folly than candor in the
declaration without necessity.
  Much about the same time the Paix Perpetuelle* made its
appearance, of this I had the year before given the manuscript to a
certain M. de Bastide, the author of a journal called Le Monde,*(2)
into which he would at all events cram all my manuscripts. He was
known to M. Duclos, and came in his name to beg I would help him to
fill the Monde. He had heard speak of Julie, and would have me put
this into his journal; he was also desirous of making the same use
of Emile; he would have asked me for the Contrat Social, for the
same purpose, had he suspected it to be written. At length, fatigued
with his importunities, I resolved upon letting him have the Paix
Perpetuelle, which I gave him for twelve louis. Our agreement was,
that he should print it in his journal; but as soon as he became the
proprietor of the manuscript, he thought proper to print it
separately, with a few retrenchments, which the censor required him to
make. What would have happened had I joined to the work my opinion
of it, which fortunately I did not communicate to M. de Bastide, nor
was it comprehended in our agreement? This remains still in manuscript
amongst my papers. If ever it be made public, the world will see how
much the pleasantries and self-sufficient manner of M. de Voltaire
on the subject must have made me, who was so well acquainted with
the short-sightedness of this poor man in political matters, of
which he took it into his head to speak, shake my sides with laughter.

  * Perpetual Peace.
  *(2) The World.

  In the midst of my success with the women and the public, I felt I
lost ground at the Hotel de Luxembourg, not with the marechal, whose
goodness to me seemed daily to increase, but with his lady. Since I
had had nothing more to read to her, the door of her apartment was not
so frequently open to me, and during her stay at Montmorency, although
I regularly presented myself, I seldom saw her except at table. My
place even there was not distinctly marked out as usual. As she no
longer offered me that by her side, and spoke to me but seldom, not
having on my part much to say to her, I was as well satisfied with
another, where I was more at my ease, especially in the evening; for I
mechanically contracted the habit of placing myself nearer and
nearer to the marechal.
  Apropos of the evening: I recollect having said I did not sup at the
castle, and this was true, at the beginning of my acquaintance
there; but as M. de Luxembourg did not dine, nor even sit down to
table, it happened that I was for several months, and already very
familiar in the family, without ever having eaten with him. This he
had the goodness to remark upon, when I determined to sup there from
time to time, when the company was not numerous; I did so, and found
the suppers very agreeable, as the dinners were taken almost standing;
whereas the former were long, everybody remaining seated with pleasure
after a long walk; and very good and agreeable, because M. de
Luxembourg loved good eating, and the honors of them were done in a
charming manner by madam la marechale. Without this explanation it
would be difficult to understand the end of a letter from M. de
Luxembourg, in which he says he recollects our walks with the greatest
pleasure; especially, adds he, when in the evening we entered the
court and did not find there the traces of carriages. The rake being
every morning drawn over the gravel to efface the marks left by the
coach wheels, I judged by the number of ruts of that of the persons
who had arrived in the afternoon.
  This year, 1761, completed the heavy losses this good man had
suffered since I had had the honor of being known to him. As if it had
been ordained that the evils prepared for me by destiny should begin
by the man to whom I was most attached, and who was the most worthy of
esteem. The first year he lost his sister, the Duchess of Villeroy;
the second, his daughter, the Princess of Robeck; the third, he lost
in the Duke of Montmorency his only son; and in the Comte de
Luxembourg, his grandson, the last two supporters of the branch of
which he was, and of his name. He supported all these losses with
apparent courage, but his heart incessantly bled in secret during
the rest of his life, and his health was ever after upon the
decline. The unexpected and tragical death of his son must have
afflicted him the more, as it happened immediately after the king
had granted him for this child, and given him in promise for his
grandson, the reversion of the commission he himself then held of
the captain of the Gardes du Corps. He had the mortification to see
the last, a most promising young man, perish by degrees, from the
blind confidence of the mother in the physician, who giving the
unhappy youth medicines for food, suffered him to die of inanition.
Alas! had my advice been taken, the grandfather and the grandson would
both still have been alive. What did not I say and write to the
marechal, what remonstrances did I make to Madam de Montmorency,
upon the more than severe regimen, which, upon the faith of
physicians, she made her son observe! Madam de Luxembourg, who thought
as I did, would not usurp the authority of the mother; M. de
Luxembourg, a man of a mild and easy character, did not like to
contradict her. Madam de Montmorency had in Bordeu a confidence to
which her son at length became a victim. How delighted was the poor
creature when he could obtain permission to come to Mont-Louis with
Madam de Boufflers, to ask Theresa for some victuals for his
famished stomach! How did I secretly deplore the miseries of greatness
in seeing this only heir to an immense fortune, a great name, and so
many dignified titles, devour with the greediness of a beggar a
wretched morsel of bread! At length, notwithstanding all I could say
and do, the physician triumphed, and the child died of hunger.
  The same confidence in quacks, which destroyed the grandson,
hastened the dissolution of the grandfather, and to this he added
the pusillanimity of wishing to dissimulate the infirmities of age. M.
de Luxembourg had at intervals a pain in the great toe; he was
seized with it at Montmorency, which deprived him of sleep, and
brought on slight fever. I had courage enough to pronounce the word
"gout." Madam de Luxembourg gave me a reprimand. The surgeon, valet de
chambre of the marechal, maintained it was not the gout, and dressed
the suffering part with baume tranquille. Unfortunately the pain
subsided, and when it returned the same remedy was had recourse to.
The constitution of the marechal was weakened, and his disorder
increased, as did his remedies in the same proportion. Madam de
Luxembourg, who at length perceived the primary disorder to be the
gout, objected to the dangerous manner of treating it. Things were
afterwards concealed from her, and M. de Luxembourg in a few years
lost his life in consequence of his obstinate adherence to what he
imagined to be a method of cure. But let me not anticipate misfortune:
how many others have I to relate before I come to this!
  It is singular with what fatality everything I could say and do
seemed of a nature to displease Madam de Luxembourg, even when I had
it most at heart to preserve her friendship. The repeated
afflictions which fell upon M. de Luxembourg still attached me to
him the more, and consequently to Madam de Luxembourg; for they always
seemed to me to be so sincerely united, that the sentiments in favor
of the one necessarily extended to the other. The marechal grew old.
His assiduity at court, the cares this brought on, continually
hunting, fatigue, and especially that of the service during the
quarter he was in waiting, required the vigor of a young man, and I
did not perceive anything that could support him in that course of
life; since, besides after his death, his dignities were to be
dispersed and his name extinct, it was by no means necessary for him
to continue a laborious life of which the principal object had been to
dispose the prince favorably to his children. One day when we three
were together, and he complained of the fatigues of the court, as a
man who had been discouraged by his losses, I took the liberty to
speak of retirement, and to give him the advice Cyneas gave to
Pyrrhus. He sighed, and returned no positive answer. But the moment
Madam de Luxembourg found me alone she reprimanded me severely for
what I had said, at which she seemed to be alarmed. She made a
remark of which I so strongly felt the justness that I determined
never again to touch upon the subject: this was, that the long habit
of living at court made that life necessary, that it was become a
matter of amusement for M. de Luxembourg, and that the retirement I
proposed to him would be less a relaxation from care than an exile, in
which inactivity, weariness and melancholy would soon put an end to
his existence. Although she must have perceived I was convinced, and
ought to have relied upon the promise I made her, and which I
faithfully kept, she still seemed to doubt of it; and I recollect that
the conversations I afterwards had with the marechal were less
frequent and almost always interrupted.
  Whilst my stupidity and awkwardness injured me in her opinion,
persons whom she frequently saw and most loved, were far from being
disposed to aid me in gaining what I had lost. The Abbe de Boufflers
especially, a young man as lofty as it was possible for a man to be,
never seemed well disposed towards me; and besides his being the
only person of the society of Madam de Luxembourg who never showed
me the least attention, I thought I perceived I lost something with
her every time he came to the castle. It is true that without his
wishing this to be the case, his presence alone was sufficient to
produce the effect: so much did his graceful and elegant manner render
still more dull my stupid spropositi. During the first two years he
seldom came to Montmorency, and by the indulgence of Madam de
Luxembourg I had tolerably supported myself, but as soon as his visits
began to be regular I was irretrievably lost. I wished to take
refuge under his wing, and gain his friendship; but the same
awkwardness which made it necessary I should please him prevented me
from succeeding in the attempt I made to do it, and what I did with
that intention entirely lost me with Madam de Luxembourg, without
being of the least service to me with the abbe. With his understanding
he might have succeeded in anything, but the impossibility of applying
himself, and his turn for dissipation, prevented his acquiring a
perfect knowledge of any subject. His talents are however various, and
this is sufficient for the circles in which he wishes to distinguish
himself. He writes light poetry and fashionable letters, strums on the
cithern, and pretends to draw with crayons. He took it into his head
to attempt the portrait of Madam de Luxembourg: the sketch he produced
was horrid. She said it did not in the least resemble her, and this
was true. The traitorous abbe consulted me, and I, like a fool and a
liar, said there was a likeness. I wished to flatter the abbe, but I
did not please the lady, who noted down what I had said, and the abbe,
having obtained what he wanted, laughed at me in his turn. I perceived
by the ill success of this my late beginning the necessity of never
making another attempt to flatter invita Minerva.
  My talent was that of telling men useful but severe truths with
energy and courage; to this it was necessary to confine myself. Not
only I was not born to flatter, but I knew not how to commend. The
awkwardness of the manner in which I have sometimes bestowed
eulogium has done me more harm than the severity of my censure. Of
this I have to adduce one terrible instance, the consequences of which
have not only fixed my fate for the rest of my life, but will
perhaps decide on my reputation throughout all posterity.
  During the residence of M. de Luxembourg at Montmorency, M. de
Choiseul sometimes came to supper at the castle. He arrived there
one day after I had left it. My name was mentioned, and M. de
Luxembourg related to him what had happened at Venice between me and
M. de Montaigu. M. de Choiseul said it was a pity I had quitted that
track, and that if I chose to enter it again he would most willingly
give me employment. M. de Luxembourg told me what had passed. Of
this I was the more sensible as I was not accustomed to be spoiled
by ministers, and had I been in a better state of health it is not
certain that I should not have been guilty of a new folly. Ambition
never had power over my mind except during the short intervals in
which every other passion left me at liberty; but one of these
intervals would have been sufficient to determine me. This good
intention of M. de Choiseul gained him my attachment and increased the
esteem which, in consequence of some operations in his administration,
I had conceived for his talents; and the family compact in
particular had appeared to me to evince a statesman of the first
order. He moreover gained ground in my estimation by the little
respect I entertained for his predecessors, not even excepting Madam
de Pompadour, whom I considered as a species of prime minister, and
when it was reported that one of these two would expel the other, I
thought I offered up prayers for the honor of France when I wished
that M. de Choiseul might triumph. I had always felt an antipathy to
Madam de Pompadour, even before her preferment; I had seen her with
Madam de la Popliniere when her name was still Madam d'Etioles. I
was afterwards dissatisfied with her silence on the subject of
Diderot, and with her proceedings relative to myself, as well on the
subject of the Fetes de Raniere and the Muses Galantes, as on that
of the Devin du Village, which had not in any manner produced me
advantages proportioned to its success; and on all occasions I had
found her but little disposed to serve me. This however did not
prevent the Chevalier de Lorenzi from proposing to me to write
something in praise of that lady, insinuating that I might acquire
some advantage by it. The proposition excited my indignation, the more
as I perceived it did not come from himself, knowing that, passive
as he was, he thought and acted according to the impulsion he
received. I am so little accustomed to constraint that it was
impossible for me to conceal from him my disdain, nor from anybody the
moderate opinion I had of the favorite; this I am sure she knew, and
thus my own interest was added to my natural inclination in the wishes
I formed for M. de Choiseul. Having a great esteem for his talents,
which was all I knew of him, full of gratitude for his kind
intentions, and moreover unacquainted in my retirement with his
taste and manner of living, I already considered him as the avenger of
the public and myself; and being at that time writing the conclusion
of my Contrat Social, I stated in it, in a single passage, what I
thought of preceding ministers, and of him by whom they began to be
eclipsed. On this occasion I acted contrary to my most constant maxim;
and besides, I did not recollect that, in bestowing praise and
strongly censuring in the same article, without naming the persons,
the language must be so appropriated to those to whom it is
applicable, that the most ticklish pride cannot find in it the least
thing equivocal. I was in this respect in such an imprudent
security, that I never once thought it was possible any one should
make a false application.
  One of my misfortunes was always to be connected with some female
author. This I thought I might avoid amongst the great. I was
deceived; it still pursued me. Madam de Luxembourg was not, however,
at least that I know of, attacked with the mania of writing; but Madam
de Boufflers was. She wrote a tragedy in prose, which, in the first
place, was read, handed about, and highly spoken of in the society
of the Prince of Conti, and upon which, not satisfied with the
encomiums she received, she would absolutely consult me for the
purpose of having mine. This she obtained, but with that moderation
which the work deserved. She besides, had with it the information I
thought it my duty to give her, that her piece, entitled L'Esclave
Genereux, greatly resembled the English tragedy of Oroonoko, but
little known in France, although translated into the French
language. Madam de Boufflers thanked me for the remark, but,
however, assured me there was not the least resemblance between her
piece and the other. I never spoke of the plagiarism except to
herself, and I did it to discharge a duty she had imposed on me; but
this has not since prevented me from frequently recollecting the
consequences of the sincerity of Gil Blas to the preaching archbishop.
  Besides the Abbe de Boufflers, by whom I was not beloved, and
Madam de Boufflers, in whose opinion I was guilty of that which
neither women nor authors ever pardon, the other friends of Madam de
Luxembourg never seemed much disposed to become mine, particularly the
President Henault, who, enrolled amongst authors, was not exempt
from their weaknesses; also Madam du Deffand and Mademoiselle de
Lespinasse, both intimate with Voltaire and the friends of D'Alembert,
with whom the latter at length. lived; however upon an honorable
footing, for it cannot be understood I mean otherwise. I first began
to interest myself for Madam du Deffand, whom the loss of her eyes
made an object of commiseration in mine; but her manner of living,
so contrary to my own, that her hour of going to bed was almost mine
for rising; her unbounded passion for low wit, the importance she gave
to every kind of printed trash, either complimentary or abusive, the
despotism and transports of her oracles, her excessive admiration or
dislike of everything, which did not permit her to speak upon any
subject without convulsions, her inconceivable prejudices,
invincible obstinacy, and the enthusiasm of folly to which this
carried her in her passionate judgments; all disgusted me and
diminished the attention I wished to pay her. I neglected her and
she perceived it; this was enough to set her in a rage, and,
although I was sufficiently aware how much a woman of her character
was to be feared, I preferred exposing myself to the scourge of her
hatred rather than to that of her friendship.
  My having so few friends in the society of Madam de Luxembourg would
not have been in the least dangerous had I had no enemies in her
family. Of these I had but one, who, in my then situation, was as
powerful as a hundred. It certainly was not M. de Villeroy, her
brother; for he not only came to see me, but had several times invited
me to Villeroy; and as I had answered to the invitation with all
possible politeness and respect, he had taken my vague manner of doing
it as a consent, and arranged with Madam de Luxembourg a journey of
a fortnight, in which it was proposed to me to make one of the
party. As the cares my health then required did not permit me to go
from home without risk, I prayed Madam de Luxembourg to have the
goodness to make my apologies. Her answer proves this was done with
all possible ease, and M. de Villeroy still continued to show me his
usual marks of goodness. His nephew and heir, the young Marquis of
Villeroy, had not for me the same benevolence, nor had I for him the
respect I had for his uncle. His hare-brained manner rendered him
insupportable to me, and my coldness drew upon me his aversion. He
insultingly attacked me one evening at table, and I had the worst of
it because I am a fool, without presence of mind; and because anger,
instead of rendering my wit more poignant, deprives me of the little I
have. I had a dog which had been given me when he was quite young,
soon after my arrival at the Hermitage, and which I had called Duke.
This dog, not handsome, but rare of his kind, of which I had made my
companion and friend, a title he certainly merited much more than most
of the persons by whom it was taken, became in great request at the
castle of Montmorency for his good nature and fondness, and the
attachment we had to each other; but from a foolish pusillanimity I
had changed his name to Turk, as if there were not many dogs called
Marquis, without giving the least offense to any marquis whatsoever.
The Marquis de Villeroy, who knew of this change of name, attacked
me in such a manner that I was obliged openly at table to relate
what I had done. Whatever there might be offensive in the name of
duke, it was not in my having given, but in my having taken it away.
The worst of it all was, there were many dukes present, amongst others
M. de Luxembourg and his son; and the Marquis de Villeroy, who was one
day to have, and now has that tide, enjoyed in the most cruel manner
the embarrassment into which he had thrown me. I was told the next day
his aunt had severely reprimanded him, and it may be judged whether or
not, supposing her to have been serious, this put me upon better terms
with him.
  To enable me to support his enmity I had no person, neither at the
Hotel de Luxembourg nor at the Temple, except the Chevalier de
Lorenzi, who professed himself my friend; but he was more that of
D'Alembert, under whose protection he passed with women for a great
geometrician. He was moreover the cicisbeo, or rather the
complaisant chevalier of the Countess of Boufflers, a great friend
also to D'Alembert, and the Chevalier de Lorenzi was the most
passive instrument in her hands. Thus, far from having in that
circle any counterbalance to my inaptitude, to keep me in the good
graces of Madam de Luxembourg, everybody who approached her seemed
to concur in adjuring me in her opinion. Yet, besides Emile, with
which she charged herself, she gave me at the same time another mark
of her benevolence, which made me imagine that, although wearied
with my conversation, she would still preserve for me the friendship
she had so many times promised me for life.
  As soon as I thought I could depend upon this, I began to ease my
heart, by confessing to her all my faults, having made it an
inviolable maxim to show myself to my friends such as I really was,
neither better nor worse. I had declared to her my connection with
Theresa, and everything that had resulted from it, without
concealing the manner in which I had disposed of my children. She
had received my confessions favorably, and even too much so, since she
spared me the censures I so much merited; and what made the greatest
impression upon me was her goodness to Theresa, making her presents,
sending for her, and begging her to come and see her, receiving her
with caresses, and often embracing her in public. This poor girl was
in transports of joy and gratitude, of which I certainly partook;
the friendship Madam de Luxembourg showed me in her condescensions
to Theresa affected me much more than if they had been made
immediately to myself.
  Things remained in this state for a considerable time; but at length
Madam de Luxembourg carried her goodness so far as to have a desire to
take one of my children from the hospital. She knew I had put a cipher
into the swaddling clothes of the eldest; she asked me for the
counterpart of the cipher, and I gave it her. In this research she
employed La Roche, her valet de chamber and confidential servant,
who made vain inquiries, although after only about twelve or
fourteen years, had the registers of the foundling hospital been in
order, or the search properly made, the original cipher ought to
have been found. However this may be, I was less sorry for his want of
success than I should have been had I from time to time continued to
see the child from his birth until that moment. If by the aid of the
indications given, another child had been presented as my own, the
doubt of its being so in fact, and the fear of having one thus
substituted for it, would have contracted my affections, and I
should not have tasted of the charm of the real sentiment of nature.
This during infancy stands in need of being supported by habit. The
long absence of a child whom the father has seen but for an instant,
weakens, and at length annihilates paternal sentiment, and parents
will never love a child sent to nurse, like that which is brought up
under their eyes. This reflection may extenuate my faults in their
effects, but it must aggravate them in their source.
  It may not perhaps be useless to remark that by the means of
Theresa, the same La Roche became acquainted with Madam de Vasseur,
whom Grimm still kept at Deuil, near La Chevrette, and not far from
Montmorency.
  After my departure it was by means of La Roche that I continued to
send this woman the money I had constantly sent her at stated times,
and I am of opinion he often carried her presents from Madam de
Luxembourg; therefore she certainly was not to be pitied, although she
constantly complained. With respect to Grimm, as I am not fond of
speaking of persons whom I ought to hate, I never mentioned his name
to Madam de Luxembourg, except when I could not avoid it; but she
frequently made him the subject of conversation, without telling me
what she thought of the man, or letting me discover whether or not
he was of her acquaintance. Reserve with people I love and who are
open with me being contrary to my nature, especially in things
relating to themselves, I have since that time frequently thought of
that of Madam de Luxembourg; but never, except when other events
rendered the recollection natural.
  Having waited a long time without hearing speak of Emile, after I
had given it to Madam de Luxembourg, I at last heard the agreement was
made at Paris, with the bookseller Duchesne, and by him with
Neaulme, of Amsterdam. Madam de Luxembourg sent me the original, and
the duplicate of my agreement with Duchesne, that I might sign them. I
discovered the writing to be by the same hand as that of the letters
of M. de Malesherbes, which he himself did not write. The certainty
that my agreement was made by the consent, and under the eye of that
magistrate, made me sign without hesitation. Duchesne gave me for
the manuscript six thousand livres, half down, and one or two
hundred copies. After having signed the two documents, I sent them
both to Madam de Luxembourg, according to her desire; she gave one
to Duchesne, and instead of returning the other kept it herself, so
that I never saw it afterwards.
  My acquaintance with M. and Madam de Luxembourg, though it
diverted me a little from my plan of retirement, did not make me
entirely renounce it. Even at the time I was most in favor with
Madam de Luxembourg, I always felt that nothing but my sincere
attachment to the marechal and herself could render to me
supportable the people with whom they were connected, and all the
difficulty I had was in conciliating this attachment with a manner
of life more agreeable to my inclination, and less contrary to my
health, which constraint and late suppers continually deranged,
notwithstanding all the care taken to prevent it; for in this, as in
everything else, attention was carried as far as possible; thus, for
instance, every evening after supper the marechal, who went early to
bed, never failed, notwithstanding everything that could be said to
the contrary, to make me withdraw at the same time. It was not until
some little time before my catastrophe that, for what reason I know
not, he ceased to pay me that attention. Before I perceived the
coolness of Madam de Luxembourg, I was desirous, that I might not
expose myself to it, to execute my old project; but not having the
means to that effect, I was obliged to wait for the conclusion of
the agreement for Emile, and in the time I finished the Contrat
Social, and sent it to Rey, fixing the price of the manuscript at a
thousand livres, which he paid me.
  I ought not perhaps to omit a trifling circumstance relative to this
manuscript. I gave it, well sealed up, to Du Voisin, a minister in the
pays de Vaud and chaplain at the Hotel de Hollande, who sometimes came
to see me, and took upon himself to send the packet to Rey, with
whom he was connected. The manuscript, written in a very small hand,
was but very trifling, and did not fill his pocket. Yet, in passing
the barriere, the packet fell, I know not by what means, into the
hands of the Commis, who opened and examined it, and afterwards
returned it to him, when he had reclaimed it in the name of the
ambassador. This gave him an opportunity of reading it himself,
which he ingenuously wrote me he had done, speaking highly of the
work, without suffering a word of criticism or censure to escape
him; undoubtedly reserving to himself to become the avenger of
Christianity as soon as the work should appear. He sealed the packet
and sent it to Rey. Such is the substance of his narrative in the
letter in which he gave an account of the affair, and is all I ever
knew of the matter.
  Besides these two books and my dictionary of music, at which I still
did something as opportunity offered, I had other works of less
importance ready to make their appearance, and which I proposed to
publish either separately or in my general collection, should I ever
undertake it. The principal of these works, most of which are still in
manuscript in the hands of De Peyrou, was an essay on the origin of
Languages, which I had read to M. de Malesherbes and the Chevalier
de Lorenzi, who spoke favorably of it. I expected all the
productions together would produce me a net capital of from eight to
ten thousand livres, which I intended to sink in annuities for my life
and that of Theresa; after which, our design, as I have already
mentioned, was to go and live together in the midst of some
province, without further troubling the public about me, or myself
with any other project than that of peacefully ending my days, and
still continuing to do in my neighborhood all the good in my power,
and to write at leisure the memoirs which I meditated.
  Such was my intention, and the execution of it was facilitated by an
act of generosity in Rey, upon which I cannot be silent. This
bookseller, of whom so many unfavorable things were told me in
Paris, is, notwithstanding, the only one with whom I have always had
reason to be satisfied. It is true, we frequently disagreed as to
the execution of my works; he was heedless and I was choleric but in
matters of interest which related to them, although I never made
with him an agreement in form, I always found in him great exactness
and probity. He is also the only person of his profession who
frankly confessed to me he gained largely by my means; and he
frequently, when he offered me a part of his fortune, told me I was
the author of it all. Not finding the means of exercising his
gratitude immediately upon myself, he wished at least to give me
proofs of it in the person of my governante, upon whom he settled an
annuity of three hundred livres, expressing in the deed that it was an
acknowledgment for the advantages I had procured him. This he did
between himself and me, without ostentation, pretension, or noise, and
had not I spoken of it to everybody, not a single person would ever
have known anything of the matter. I was so pleased with this action
that I became attached to Rey, and conceived for him a real
friendship. Sometime afterwards he desired I would become godfather to
one of his children; I consented, and a part of my regret in the
situation to which I am reduced, is my being deprived of the means
of rendering in future my attachment to my goddaughter useful to her
and her parents. Why am I, who am so sensible of the modest generosity
of this bookseller, so little so of the noisy eagerness of many
persons of the highest rank, who pompously fill the world with
accounts of the services they say they wished to render me, but the
good effects of which I never felt? Is it their fault or mine? Are
they nothing more than vain; is my insensibility purely ingratitude?
Intelligent reader, weigh and determine; for my part I say no more.
  This pension was a great resource to Theresa and a considerable
alleviation to me, although I was far from receiving from it a
direct advantage, any more than from the presents that were made her.
  She herself has always disposed of everything. When I kept her money
I gave her a faithful account of it without ever applying any part
of the deposit to our common expenses, not even when she was richer
than myself. "What is mine is ours," said I to her; "and what is thine
is thine." I never departed from this maxim. They who have had the
baseness to accuse me of receiving by her hands that which I refused
to take with mine, undoubtedly judged of my heart by their own, and
knew but little of me. I would willingly eat with her the bread she
should have earned, but not that she should have had given her. For
a proof of this I appeal to herself, both now and hereafter, when,
according to the course of nature, she shall have survived me.
Unfortunately, she understands but little of economy in any respect,
and is, besides, careless and extravagant, not from vanity nor
gluttony, but solely from negligence. No creature is perfect here
below, and since her excellent qualities must be accompanied with some
defects, I prefer these to vices; although her defects are more
prejudicial to us both. The efforts I have made, as formerly I did for
mamma, to accumulate something in advance which might some day be to
her a never-failing resource, are not to be conceived; but my cares
were always ineffectual.
  Neither of these women ever called themselves to an account, and,
notwithstanding all my efforts, everything I acquired was dissipated
as fast as it came. Notwithstanding the great simplicity of
Theresa's dress, the pension from Rey has never been sufficient to buy
her clothes, and I have every year been under the necessity of
adding something to it for that purpose. We are neither of us born
to be rich, and this I certainly do not reckon amongst our
misfortunes.
  The Contrat Social was soon printed. This was not the case with
Emile, for the publication of which I waited to go into the retirement
I meditated. Duchesne, from time to time, sent me specimens of
impression to choose from; when I had made my choice, instead of
beginning he sent me others. When, at length, we were fully determined
on the size and letter, and several sheets were already printed off,
on some trifling alteration I made in a proof, he began the whole
again, and at the end of six months we were in less forwardness than
on the first day. During all these experiments I clearly perceived the
work was printing in France as well as in Holland, and that two
editions of it were preparing at the same time. What could I do? The
manuscript was no longer mine. Far from having anything to do with the
edition in France I was always against it; but since, at length,
this was preparing in spite of all opposition, and was to serve as a
model to the other, it was necessary I should cast my eyes over it and
examine the proofs, that my work might not be mutilated. It was,
besides, printed so much by the consent of the magistrate, that it was
he who in some measure, directed the undertaking; he likewise wrote to
me frequently, and once came to see me and converse on the subject
upon an occasion of which I am going to speak.
  Whilst Duchesne crept like a snail, Neaulme, whom he withheld,
scarcely moved at all. The sheets were not regularly sent him as
they were printed. He thought there was some trick in the maneuver
of Duchesne, that is, of Guy who acted for him; and perceiving the
terms of the agreement to be departed from, he wrote me letter after
letter full of complaints, and it was less possible for me to remove
the subject of them than that of those I myself had to make. His
friend, Guerin, who at that time came frequently to see my house,
never ceased speaking to me about the work, but always with the
greatest reserve. He knew and he did not know that it was printing
in France, and that the magistrate had a hand in it. In expressing his
concern for my embarrassment, he seemed to accuse me of imprudence
without ever saying in what this consisted; he incessantly
equivocated, and seemed to speak for no other purpose than to hear
what I had to say. I thought myself so secure that I laughed at his
mystery and circumspection as at a habit he had contracted with
ministers and magistrates whose offices he much frequented. Certain of
having conformed to every rule with the work, and strongly persuaded
that I had not only the consent and protection of the magistrate,
but that the book merited and had obtained the favor of the
minister, I congratulated myself upon my courage in doing good, and
laughed at my pusillanimous friends who seemed uneasy on my account.
Duclos was one of these, and I confess my confidence in his
understanding and uprightness might have alarmed me, had I had less in
the utility of the work and in the probity of those by whom it was
patronized. He came from the house of M. Baille to see me whilst Emile
was in the press; he spoke to me concerning it; I read to him the
Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar, to which he listened
attentively and, as it seemed to me, with pleasure. When I had
finished he said: "What! citizen, this is a part of a work now
printing at Paris?" "Yes," answered I, "and it ought to be printed
at the Louvre by order of the king." "I confess it," replied he;
"but pray do not mention to anybody your having read to me this
fragment."
  This striking manner of expressing himself surprised without
alarming me. I knew Duclos was intimate with M. de Malesherbes, and
I could not conceive how it was possible he should think so
differently from him upon the same subject.
  I had lived at Montmorency for the last four years without ever
having had there one day of good health. Although the air is
excellent, the water is bad, and this may possibly be one of the
causes which contributed to increase my habitual complaints. Towards
the end of the autumn of 1761, I fell quite ill, and passed the
whole winter in suffering almost without intermission. The physical
ill, augmented by a thousand inquietudes, rendered these terrible. For
some time past my mind had been disturbed by melancholy forebodings,
without my knowing to what these directly tended. I received anonymous
letters of an extraordinary nature, and others, that were signed, much
of the same import. I received one from a counselor of the
parliament of Paris, who, dissatisfied with the present constitution
of things, and foreseeing nothing but disagreeable events, consulted
me upon the choice of an asylum at Geneva or in Switzerland, to retire
this parliament, which was then at variance with the court, memoirs
and remonstrances, and offering to furnish me with all the documents
and materials necessary to that purpose.
  When I suffer I am subject to ill humor. This was the case when I
received these letters, and my answers to them, in which I flatly
refused everything that was asked of me, bore strong marks of the
effect they had had upon my mind. I do not however reproach myself
with this refusal, as the letters might be so many snares laid by my
enemies,* and what was required of me was contrary to the principles
from which I was less willing than ever to swerve. But having it in my
power to refuse with politeness I did it with rudeness, and in this
consists my error.

the Encyclopedists and the Holbachiens.

  The two letters of which I have just spoken will be found amongst my
papers. The letter from the chancellor did not absolutely surprise me,
because I agreed with him in opinion, and with many others, that the
declining constitution of France threatened an approaching
destruction. The disasters of an unsuccessful war, all of which
proceeded from a fault in the government; the incredible confusion
in the finances; the perpetual drawings upon the treasury by the
administration, which was then divided between two or three ministers,
amongst whom reigned nothing but discord, and who, to counteract the
operations of each other, let the kingdom go to ruin; the discontent
of the people, and of every other rank of subjects; the obstinacy of a
woman who, constantly sacrificing her judgment, if she indeed
possessed any, to her inclinations, kept from public employment
persons capable of discharging the duties of them, to place in them
such as pleased her best; everything concurred in justifying the
foresight of the counselor, that of the public, and my own. This
made me several times consider whether or not I myself should seek
an asylum out of the kingdom before it was torn by the dissensions
by which it seemed to be threatened; but relieved from my fears by
my insignificance, and the peacefulness of my disposition, I
thought, that in the state of solitude in which I was determined to
live, no public commotion could reach me. I was sorry only that, in
this state of things, M. de Luxembourg should accept commissions which
tended to injure him in the opinion of the persons of the place of
which he was governor. I could have wished he had prepared himself a
retreat there, in case the great machine had fallen in pieces, which
seemed much to be apprehended; and it still appears to me beyond a
doubt, that if the reins of government had not fallen into a single
hand, the French monarchy would now be at the last gasp.
  Whilst my situation became worse the printing of Emile went on
more slowly, and was at length suspended without my being able to
learn the reason why; Guy did not deign to answer my letter of
inquiry, and I could obtain no information from any person of what was
going forward; M. de Malesherbes being then in the country. A
misfortune never makes me uneasy provided I know in what it
consists; but it is my nature to be afraid of darkness, I tremble at
the appearance of it; mystery always gives me inquietude, it is too
opposite to my natural disposition, in which there is an openness
bordering on imprudence. The sight of the most hideous monster
would, I am of opinion, alarm me but little; but if by night I were to
see a figure in a white sheet I should be afraid of it. My
imagination, wrought upon by this long silence, was now employed in
creating phantoms. I tormented myself the more in endeavoring to
discover the impediment to the printing of my last and best
production, as I had the publication of it much at heart; and as I
always carried everything to an extreme, I imagined that I perceived
in the suspension the suppression of the work. Yet, being unable to
discover either the cause or manner of it, I remained in the most
cruel state of suspense. I wrote letter after letter to Guy, to M.
de Malesherbes and to Madam de Luxembourg, and not receiving
answers, at least when I expected them, my head became so affected
that I was not far from a delirium. I unfortunately heard that
Father Griffet, a Jesuit, had spoken of Emile and repeated from it
some passages. My imagination instantly unveiled to me the mystery
of iniquity; I saw the whole progress of it as clearly as if it had
been revealed to me. I figured to myself that the Jesuits, furious
on account of the contemptuous manner in which I had spoken of
colleges, were in possession of my work; that it was they who had
delayed the publication; that, informed by their friend Guerin of my
situation, and foreseeing my approaching dissolution, of which I
myself had no manner of doubt, they wished to delay the appearance
of the work until after that event, with an intention to curtail and
mutilate it, and in favor of their own views, to attribute to me
sentiment not my own. The number of facts and circumstances which
occurred to my mind, in confirmation of this silly proposition, and
gave it an appearance of truth supported by evidence and
demonstration, is astonishing. I knew Guerin to be entirely in the
interest of the Jesuits. I attributed to them all the friendly
advances he had made me; I was persuaded he had, by their
entreaties, pressed me to engage with Neaulme, who had given them
the first sheets of my work; that they had afterwards found means to
stop the printing of it by Duchesne, and perhaps to get possession
of the manuscript to make such alterations in it as they should
think proper, that after my death they might publish it disguised in
their own manner. I had always perceived, notwithstanding the
wheedling of Father Berthier, that the Jesuits did not like me, not
only as an Encyclopedist, but because all my principles were more in
opposition to their maxims and influence than the incredulity of my
colleagues, since atheistical and devout fanaticism, approaching
each other by their common enmity to toleration, may become united;
a proof of which is seen in China, and in the cabal against myself;
whereas religion, both reasonable and moral, taking away all power
over the conscience, deprives those who assume that power of every
resource. I knew the chancellor was a great friend to the Jesuits, and
I had my fears lest the son, intimidated by the father, should find
himself under the necessity of abandoning the work he had protected. I
besides imagined that I perceived this to be the case in the chicanery
employed against me relative to the first two volumes, in which
alterations were required for reasons of which I could not feel the
force; whilst the other two volumes were known to contain things of
such a nature as, had the censor objected to them in the manner he did
to the passages he thought exceptionable in the others, would have
required their being entirely written over again. I also understood,
and M. de Malesherbes himself told me of it, that the Abbe de Grave,
whom he had charged with the inspection of this edition, was another
partisan of the Jesuits. I saw nothing but Jesuits, without
considering that, upon the point of being suppressed, and wholly taken
up in making their defense, they had something which interested them
much more than the cavilings relative to a work in which they were not
in question. I am wrong, however, in saying this did not occur to
me; for I really thought of it, and M. de Malesherbes took care to
make the observation to me the moment he heard of my extravagant
suspicions. But by another of those absurdities of a man who, from the
bosom of obscurity, will absolutely judge of the secret of great
affairs, with which he is totally unacquainted, I never could bring
myself to believe the Jesuits were in danger, and I considered the
rumor of their suppression as an artful maneuver of their own to
deceive their adversaries. Their past successes, which had been
uninterrupted, gave me so terrible an idea of their power, that I
already was grieved at the overthrow of the parliament. I knew M. de
Choiseul had prosecuted his studies under the Jesuits, that Madam de
Pompadour was not upon bad terms with them, and that their league with
favorites and ministers had constantly appeared advantageous to
their order against their common enemies. The court seemed to remain
neuter, and persuaded as I was that should the society receive a
severe check it would not come from the parliament, I saw in the
inaction of government the ground of their confidence and the omen
of their triumph.
  In fine, perceiving in the rumors of the day nothing more than art
and dissimulation on their part, and thinking they, in their state
of security, had time to watch over all their interests, I had had not
the least doubt of their shortly crushing Jansenism, the parliament
and the Encyclopedists, with every other association which should
not submit to their yoke; and that if they ever suffered my work to
appear, this would not happen until it should be so transformed as
to favor their pretensions, and thus make use of my name the better to
deceive my readers.
  I felt my health and strength decline; and such was the horror
with which my mind was filled, at the idea of dishonor to my memory in
the work most worthy of myself, that I am surprised so many
extravagant ideas did not occasion a speedy end to my existence. I
never was so much afraid of death as at this time, and had I died with
the apprehensions I then had upon my mind, I should have died in
despair. At present, although I perceived no obstacle to the execution
of the blackest and most dreadful conspiracy ever formed against the
memory of a man, I shall die much more in peace, certain of leaving in
my writings a testimony in my favor, and one which, sooner or later,
will triumph over the calumnies of mankind.
  M. de Malesherbes, who discovered the agitation of my mind, and to
whom I acknowledged it, used such endeavors to restore me to
tranquillity as proved his excessive goodness of heart. Madam de
Luxembourg aided him in this good work, and several times went to
Duchesne to know in what state the edition was. At length the
impression was again begun, and the progress of it became more rapid
than ever, without my knowing for what reason it had been suspended.
M. de Malesherbes took the trouble to come to Montmorency to calm my
mind; in this he succeeded, and the full confidence I had in his
uprightness having overcome the derangement of my poor head, gave
efficacy to the endeavors he made to restore it. After what he had
seen of my anguish and delirium, it was natural he should think I
was to be pitied; and he really commiserated my situation. The
expressions, incessantly repeated, of the philosophical cabal by which
he was surrounded, occurred to his memory. When I went to live at
the Hermitage, they, as I have already remarked, said I should not
remain there long. When they saw I persevered, they charged me with
obstinacy and pride, proceeding from a want of courage to retract, and
insisted that my life was there a burden to me; in short, that I was
very wretched. M. de Malesherbes believed this really to be the
case, and wrote to me upon the subject. This error in a man for whom I
had so much esteem gave me some pain, and I wrote to him four
letters successively, in which I stated the real motives of my
conduct, and made him fully acquainted with my taste, inclination
and character, and with the most interior sentiments of my heart.
These letters, written hastily, almost without taking pen from
paper, and which I neither copied, corrected, nor even read, are
perhaps, the only things I ever wrote with facility, which, in the
midst of my sufferings, was, I think, astonishing. I sighed, as I felt
myself declining, at the thought of leaving in the midst of honest men
an opinion of me so far from truth; and by the sketch hastily given in
my four letters, I endeavored, in some measure, to substitute them
to the memoirs I had proposed to write. They are expressive of my
grief to M. de Malesherbes, who showed them in Paris, and are,
besides, a kind of summary of what I here give in detail, and, on this
account, merit preservation. The copy I begged of them some years
afterwards will be found amongst my papers.
  The only thing which continued to give me pain, in the idea of my
approaching dissolution, was my not having a man of letters for a
friend, to whom I could confide my papers, that after my death he
might take a proper choice of such as were worthy of publication.
  After my journey to Geneva, I conceived a friendship for Moultou;
this young man pleased me, and I could have wished him to receive my
last breath. I expressed to him this desire, and am of opinion he
would readily have complied with it, had not his affairs prevented him
from so doing. Deprived of this consolation I still wished to give him
a mark of my confidence by sending him the Profession of Faith of
the Savoyard Vicar before it was published. He was pleased with the
work, but did not in his answer seem so fully to expect from it the
effect of which I had but little doubt. He wished to receive from me
some fragment which I had not given to anybody else. I sent him the
funeral oration of the late Duke of Orleans; this I had written for
the Abbe Darty, who had not pronounced it, because, contrary to his
expectation, another person was appointed to perform that ceremony.
  The printing of Emile, after having been again taken in hand, was
continued and completed without much difficulty; and I remarked this
singularity, that after the curtailings so much insisted upon in the
first two volumes, the last two were passed over without an objection,
and their contents did not delay the publication for a moment. I
had, however, some uneasiness which I must not pass over in silence.
After having been afraid of the Jesuits, I began to fear the
Jansenists and philosophers. An enemy to party, faction and cabal, I
never heard the least good of persons concerned in them. The gossips
had quitted their old abode, and taken up their residence by the
side of me, so that in their chamber, everything said in mine, and
upon the terrace, was distinctly heard; and from their garden it would
have been easy to scald the low wall by which it was separated from my
alcove. This was become my study; my table was covered with
proof-sheets of Emile and the Contrat Social, and stitching these
sheets as they were sent to me, I had all my volumes a long time
before they were published. My negligence and the confidence I had
in M. Mathas, in whose garden I was shut up, frequently made me forget
to lock the door at night, and in the morning I several times found it
wide open: this, however, would not have given me the least inquietude
had I not thought my papers seemed to have been deranged. After having
several times made the same remark, I became more careful, and
locked the door. The lock was a bad one, and the key turned in it no
more than half round. As I became more attentive, I found my papers in
a much greater confusion than they were when I left everything open.
At length I missed one of my volumes without knowing what was become
of it until the morning of the third day, when I again found it upon
the table. I never suspected either M. Mathas or his nephew M. du
Moulin, knowing myself to be beloved by both, and my confidence in
them was unbounded. That I had in the gossips began to diminish.
Although they were Jansenists, I knew them to have some connection
with D'Alembert, and moreover they all three lodged in the same house.
This gave me some uneasiness, and put me more upon my guard. I removed
my papers from the alcove to my chamber, and dropped my acquaintance
with these people, having learned they had shown in several houses the
first volume of Emilius, which I had been imprudent enough to lend
them. Although they continued until my departure to be my neighbors, I
never, after my first suspicions, had the least communication with
them. The Contrat Social appeared a month or two before Emile. Rey,
whom I had desired never secretly to introduced into France any of
my books, applied to the magistrate for leave to send this book by
Rouen, to which place he sent his package by sea. He received no
answer, and his bales, after remaining at Rouen several months, were
returned to him, but not until an attempt had been made to
confiscate them; this, probably, would have been done had not he
made a great clamor. Several persons, whose curiosity the work had
excited, sent to Amsterdam for copies, which were circulated without
being much noticed. Maulion, who had heard of this, and had, I
believe, seen the work, spoke to me on the subject with an air of
mystery which surprised me, and would likewise have made me uneasy if,
certain of having conformed to every rule, I had not by virtue of my
grand maxim, kept my mind calm. I moreover had no doubt but M. de
Choiseul, already well disposed towards me, and sensible of the
eulogium of his administration, which my esteem for him had induced me
to make in the work, would support me against the malevolence of Madam
de Pompadour.
  I certainly had then as much reason as ever to hope for the goodness
of M. de Luxembourg, and even for his assistance in case of need;
for he never at any time had given me more frequent or more pointed
marks of his friendship. At the journey of Easter, my melancholy state
no longer permitting me to go to the castle, he never suffered a day
to pass without coming to see me, and at length, perceiving my
sufferings to be incessant, he prevailed upon me to determine to see
Friar Come. He immediately sent for him, came with him, and had the
courage, uncommon in a man of his rank, to remain with me during the
operation which was cruel and tedious. Upon the first examination,
Come thought he found a great stone, and told me so; at the second, he
could not find it again. After having made a third attempt with so
much care and circumspection that I thought the time long, he declared
there was no stone, but that the prostate gland was schirrous and
considerably thickened. He besides added, that I had a great deal to
suffer, and should live a long time. Should the second prediction be
as fully accomplished as the first, my sufferings are far from being
at an end.
  It was thus I learned, after having been so many years treated for
disorders which I never had, that my incurable disease, without
being mortal, would last as long as myself. My imagination,
repressed by this information, no longer presented to me in
perspective a cruel death in the agonies of the stone.
  Delivered from imaginary evils, more cruel to me than those which
were real, I more patiently suffered the latter. It is certain I
have since suffered less from my disorder than I had done before,
and every time I recollect that I owe this alleviation to M. de
Luxembourg, his memory becomes more dear to me.
  Restored, as I may say, to life, and more than ever occupied with
the plan according to which I was determined to pass the rest of my
days, all the obstacle to the immediate execution of my design was the
publication of Emile. I thought of Touraine where I had already been
and which pleased me much, as well on account of the mildness of the
climate, as on that of the character of the inhabitants.

              La terra molle lieta e dilettosa
              Simile a se gli abitator produce.

  I had already spoken of my project to M. de Luxembourg, who
endeavored to dissuade me from it; I mentioned it to him a second time
as a thing resolved upon. He then offered me the castle of Merlou,
fifteen leagues from Paris, as an asylum which might be agreeable to
me, and where he and Madam de Luxembourg would have a real pleasure in
seeing me settled. The proposition made a pleasing impression on my
mind. But the first thing necessary was to see the place, and we
agreed upon a day when the marechal was to send his valet de chamber
with a carriage to take me to it. On the day appointed, I was much
indisposed; the journey was postponed, and different circumstances
prevented me from ever making it. I have since learned the estate of
Merlou did not belong to the marechal but to his lady, on which
account I was the less sorry I had not gone to live there.
  Emile was at length given to the public, without my having heard
further of retrenchments or difficulties. Previous to the publication,
the marechal asked me for all the letters M. de Malesherbes had
written to me on the subject of the work. My great confidence in both,
and the perfect security in which I felt myself, prevented me from
reflecting upon this extraordinary and even alarming request. I
returned all the letters, excepting one or two which, from
inattention, were left between the leaves of a book. A little time
before this, M. de Malesherbes told me he should withdraw the
letters I had written to Duchesne during my alarm relative to the
Jesuits, and, it must be confessed, these letters did no great honor
to my reason. But in my answer I assured him I would not in anything
pass for being better than I was, and that he might have the letters
where they were. I know not what he resolved upon.
  The publication of this work was not succeeded by the applause which
had followed that of all my other writings. No work was ever more
highly spoken of in private, nor had any literary production ever
had less public approbation. What was said and written to me upon
the subject by persons most capable of judging, confirmed me in my
opinion that it was the best, as well as the most important of all the
works I had produced. But everything favorable was said with an air of
the most extraordinary mystery, as if there had been a necessity of
keeping it a secret. Madam de Boufflers, who wrote to me that the
author of the work merited a statue, and the homage of mankind, at the
end of her letter desired it might be returned to her. D'Alembert, who
in his note said the work. gave me a decided superiority, and ought to
place me at the head of men of letters, did not sign what he wrote,
although he had signed every note I had before received from him.
Duclos, a sure friend, a man of veracity, but circumspect, although he
had a good opinion of the work, avoided mentioning it in his letters
to me. La Condomine fell upon the Profession of Faith, and wandered
from the subject. Clairaut confined himself to the same part; but he
was not afraid of expressing to me the emotion which the reading of it
had caused in him, and in the most direct terms wrote to me that it
had warmed his old imagination: of all those to whom I had sent my
book, he was the only person who spoke freely what he thought of it.
  Mathas, to whom also I had given a copy before the publication, lent
it to M. de Blaire, counselor in the parliament of Strasbourg. M. de
Blaire had a country-house at St. Gratien, and Mathas, his old
acquaintance, sometimes went to see him there. He made him read
Emile before it was published. When he returned it to him, M. de
Blaire expressed himself in the following terms, which were repeated
to me the same day: "M. Mathas, this is a very fine work, but it
will in a short time be spoken of more than, for the author, might
be wished." I laughed at the prediction, and saw in it nothing more
than the importance of a man of the robe, who treats everything with
an air of mystery. All the alarming observations repeated to me made
no impression upon my mind, and, far from foreseeing the catastrophe
so near at hand, certain of the utility and excellence of my work, and
that I had in every respect conformed to established rules; convinced,
as I thought I was that I should be supported by all the credit of
M. de Luxembourg and the favor of the ministry, I was satisfied with
myself for the resolution I had taken to retire in the midst of my
triumphs, and at my return to crush those by whom was envied.
  One thing in the publication of the work alarmed me, less on account
of my safety than for the unburdening of my mind. At the Hermitage and
at Montmorency I had seen with indignation the vexations which the
jealous care of the pleasures of princes causes to be exercised upon
wretched peasants, forced to suffer the havoc made by game in their
fields, without daring to take any other measure to prevent this
devastation than that of making a noise, passing the night amongst the
beans and peas, with drums, kettles and bells, to keep off the wild
boars. As I had been a witness to the barbarous cruelty with which the
Comte de Charolois treated these poor people, I had towards the end of
Emile exclaimed against it. This was another infraction of my
maxims, which has not remained unpunished. I was informed that the
people of the Prince of Conti were but little less severe upon his
estates; I trembled lest that prince, for whom I was penetrated with
respect and gratitude, should take to his own account what shocked
humanity had made me say on that of others, and feel himself offended.
Yet, as my conscience fully acquitted me upon this article, I made
myself easy, and by so doing acted wisely: at least I have not heard
that this great prince took notice of the passage, which, besides, was
written long before I had the honor of being known to him.
  A few days either before or after the publication of my work, for
I do not exactly recollect the time, there appeared another work
upon the same subject, taken verbatim from my first volume, except a
few stupid things which were joined to the extract. The book bore
the name of a Genevese, one Balexsert, and, according to the
title-page, had gained the premium in the Academy of Harlem. I
easily imagined the academy and the premium to be newly founded, the
better to conceal the plagiarism from the eyes of the public; but I
further perceived there was some prior intrigue which I could not
unravel; either by the lending of my manuscript, without which the
theft could not have been committed, or for the purpose of forging the
story of the pretended premium, to which it was necessary to give some
foundation. It was not until several years afterwards, that by a
word which escaped D'Ivernois, I penetrated the mystery, and
discovered those by whom Balexsert had been brought forward.
  The low murmurings which precede a storm began to be heard, and
men of penetration clearly saw there was something gathering, relative
to me and my book, which would shortly break over my head. For my part
my stupidity was such, that, far from foreseeing my misfortune, I
did not suspect even the cause of it after I had felt its effect. It
was artfully given out that while the Jesuits were treated with
severity, no indulgence could be shown to books nor the authors of
them in which religion was attacked. I was reproached with having
put my name to Emilius, as if I had not put it to all my other works
of which nothing was said. Government seemed to fear it should be
obliged to take some steps which circumstances rendered necessary on
account of my imprudence. Rumors to this effect reached my ears, but
gave me not much uneasiness: it never even came into my head, that
there could be the least thing in the whole affair which related to me
personally, so perfectly irreproachable and well supported did I think
myself; having besides conformed to every ministerial regulation, I
did not apprehend Madam de Luxembourg would leave me in difficulties
for an error, which, if it existed, proceeded entirely from herself.
But knowing the manner of proceeding in like cases, and that it was
customary to punish booksellers while authors were favored, I had some
uneasiness on the account of poor Duchesne, whom I saw exposed to
danger, should M. de Malesherbes abandon him.
  My tranquillity still continued. Rumors increased and soon changed
their nature. The public and especially the parliament, seemed
irritated by my composure. In a few days the fermentation became
terrible, and the object of the menaces being changed, these were
immediately addressed to me. The parliamentarians were heard to
declare that burning books was of. no effect, the authors also
should be burned with them; not a word was said of the booksellers.
The first time these expressions, more worthy of an inquisitor of
Goa than a senator, were related to me, I had no doubt of their coming
from the Holbachiques with an intention to alarm me and drive me
from France. I laughed at their puerile maneuver, and said they would,
had they known the real state of things, have thought of some other
means of inspiring me with fear: but the rumor at length became such
that I perceived the matter was serious. M. and Madam de Luxembourg
had this year come to Montmorency in the month of June, which, for
their second journey, was more early than common. I heard but little
there of my new books, notwithstanding the noise they made at Paris;
neither the marechal nor his lady said a single word to me on the
subject. However, one morning, when M. de Luxembourg and I were
together, he asked me if, in the Contrat Social, I had spoken ill of
M. de Choiseul. "I?" said I, retreating a few steps with surprise;
"no, I swear to you I have not; but, on the contrary, I have made on
him, and with a pen not given to praise, the finest eulogium a
minister ever received." I then showed him the passage. "And in
Emile?" replied he. "Not a word," said I; "there is not in it a single
word which relates to him." "Ah!" said he, with more vivacity than was
common to him, "you should have taken the same care in the other book,
or have expressed yourself more clearly!" "I thought," replied I,
"what I wrote could not be misconstrued; my esteem for him was such as
to make me extremely cautious not to be equivocal."
  He was again going to speak; I perceived him ready to open his mind:
he stopped short and held his tongue. Wretched policy of a courtier,
which, in the best of hearts, subjugates friendship itself!
  This conversation, although short, explained to me my situation,
at least in certain respects, and gave me to understand that it was
against myself the anger of administration was raised. The
unheard-of fatality, which turned to my prejudice all the good I did
and wrote, afflicted my heart. Yet, feeling myself shielded in this
affair by Madam de Luxembourg and M. de Malesherbes, I did not
perceive in what my persecutors could deprive me of their
protection. However, I, from that moment, was convinced equity and
justice were no longer in question, and that no pains would be
spared in examining whether or not I was culpable. The storm became
still more menacing. Neaulme himself expressed to me, in the excess of
his babbling, how much he repented having had anything to do in the
business, and his certainty of the fate with which the book and the
author were threatened. One thing, however, alleviated my fears: Madam
de Luxembourg was so calm, satisfied and cheerful, that I concluded
she must necessarily be certain of the sufficiency of her credit,
especially if she did not seem to have the least apprehension on my
account; moreover, she said not to me a word either of consolation
or apology, and saw the turn the affair took with as much unconcern as
if she had nothing to do with it or anything else that related to
me. What surprised me most was her silence. I thought she should
have said something on the subject. Madam de Boufflers seemed rather
uneasy. She appeared agitated, strained herself a good deal, assured
me the Prince of Conti was taking great pains to ward off the blow
about to be directed against my person, and which she attributed to
the nature of present circumstances, in which it was of importance
to the parliament not to leave the Jesuits an opening whereby they
might bring an accusation against it as being indifferent with respect
to religion. She did not, however, seem to depend much either upon the
success of her own efforts or even those of the prince. Her
conversations, more alarming than consolatory, all tended to
persuade me to leave the kingdom and go to England, where she
offered me an introduction to many of her friends, amongst others
one to the celebrated Hume, with whom she had long been upon a footing
of intimate friendship. Seeing me still unshaken, she had recourse
to other arguments more capable of disturbing my tranquillity. She
intimated that, in case I was arrested and interrogated, I should be
under the necessity of naming Madam de Luxembourg, and that her
friendship for me required, on my part, such precautions as were
necessary to prevent her being exposed. My answer was, that should
what she seemed to apprehend come to pass, she need not be alarmed;
that I should do nothing by which the lady she mentioned might
become a sufferer. She said such a resolution was more easily taken
than adhered to, and in this she was right, especially with respect to
me, determined as I always have been neither to prejudice myself nor
lie before judges, whatever danger there might be in speaking the
truth.
  Perceiving this observation had made some impression upon my mind,
without however inducing me to resolve upon evasion, she spoke of
the Bastile for a few weeks, as a means of placing me beyond the reach
of the jurisdiction of the parliament, which has nothing to do with
prisoners of state. I had no objection to this singular favor,
provided it were not solicited in my name. As she never spoke of it
a second time, I afterwards thought her proposition was made to
sound me, and that the party did not think proper to have recourse
to an expedient which would have put an end to everything.
  A few days afterwards the marechal received from the Cure of
Deuil, the friend of Grimm and Madam d'Epinay, a letter informing him,
as from good authority, that the parliament was to proceed against
me with the greatest severity, and that, on a day which he
mentioned, an order was to be given to arrest me. I imagined this
was fabricated by the Holbachiques; I knew the parliament to be very
attentive to forms, and that on this occasion, beginning by
arresting me before it was juridically known I avowed myself the
author of the book was violating them all. I observed to Madam de
Boufflers that none but persons accused of crimes which tend to
endanger the public safety were, on a simple information, ordered to
be arrested lest they should escape punishment. But when government
wish to punish a crime like mine, which merits honor and recompense,
the proceedings are directed against the book, and the author is as
much as possible left out of the question.
  Upon this she made some subtle distinction, which I have
forgotten, to prove that ordering me to be arrested instead of
summoning me to be heard, was a matter of favor. The next day I
received a letter from Guy, who informed me that having in the morning
been with the attorney-general, he had seen in his office a rough
draft of a requisition against Emile and the author. Guy, it is to
be remembered, was the partner of Duchesne, who had printed the
work, and without apprehensions on his own account, charitably gave
this information to the author. The credit I gave to him may be judged
of.
  It was, no doubt, a very probable story, that a bookseller, admitted
to an audience by the attorney-general, should read at ease
scattered rough drafts in the office of that magistrate! Madam de
Boufflers and others confirmed what he had said. By the absurdities
which were incessantly rung in my ears, I was almost tempted to
believe that everybody I heard speak had lost their senses.
  Clearly perceiving that there was some mystery, which no one thought
proper to explain to me, I patiently awaited the event, depending upon
my integrity and innocence, and thinking myself happy, let the
persecution which awaited me be what it would, to be called to the
honor of suffering in the cause of truth. Far from being afraid and
concealing myself, I went every day to the castle, and in the
afternoon took my usual walk. On the eighth of June, the evening
before the order was concluded on, I walked in company with two
professors of the oratory, Father Alamanni and Father Mandard. We
carried to Champeaux a little collation, which we ate with a keen
appetite. We had forgotten to bring glasses, and supplied the want
of them by stalks of rye, through which we sucked up the wine from the
bottle, piquing ourselves upon the choice of large tubes to vie with
each other in pumping up what we drank. I never was more cheerful in
my life.
  I have related in what manner I lost my sleep during my youth. I had
since that time contracted a habit of reading every night in my bed,
until I found my eyes begin to grow heavy. I then extinguished my
wax taper, and endeavored to slumber for a few moments, which were
in general very short. The book I commonly read at night was the
Bible, which, in this manner, I read five or six times from the
beginning to the end. This evening, finding myself less disposed to
sleep than ordinary, I continued my reading beyond the usual hour, and
read the whole book which finishes at the Levite of Ephraim, the
Book of judges, if I mistake not, for since that time I have never
once seen it. This history affected me exceedingly, and, in a kind
of dream, my imagination still ran on it, when suddenly I was roused
from my stupor by a noise and light. Theresa, carrying a candle,
lighted M. la Roche, who perceiving me hastily raise myself up,
said: "Do not be alarmed; I come from Madam de Luxembourg, who, in her
letter, incloses you another from the Prince of Conti." In fact, in
the letter of Madam de Luxembourg I found another, which an express
from the prince had brought her, stating that, notwithstanding all his
efforts, it was determined to proceed against me with the utmost
rigor. "The fermentation," said he, "is extreme; nothing can ward
off the blow; the court requires it, and the parliament will
absolutely proceed; at seven o'clock in the morning an order will be
made to arrest him, and persons will immediately be sent to execute
it. I have obtained a promise that he shall not be pursued if he makes
his escape; but if he persists in exposing himself to be taken this
will immediately happen." La Roche conjured me in behalf of Madam de
Luxembourg to rise and go and speak to her. It was two o'clock, and
she had just retired to bed. "She expects you," added he, "and will
not go to sleep without speaking to you." I dressed myself in haste
and ran to her.
  She appeared to be agitated; this was for the first time. Her
distress affected me. In this moment of surprise and in the night, I
myself was not free from emotion; but on seeing her I forgot my own
situation, and thought of nothing but the melancholy part she would
have to act should I suffer myself to be arrested; for feeling I had
sufficient courage strictly to adhere to truth, although I might be
certain of its being prejudicial or even destructive to me, I was
convinced I had not presence of mind, address, nor perhaps firmness
enough, not to expose her should I be closely pressed. This determined
me to sacrifice my reputation to her tranquillity, and to do for her
that which nothing could have prevailed upon me to do for myself.
The moment I had come to this resolution, I declared it, wishing not
to diminish the magnitude of the sacrifice by giving her the least
trouble to obtain it. I am sure she could not mistake my motive,
although she said not a word, which proved to me she was sensible of
it. I was so much shocked at her indifference that I, for a moment,
thought of retracting; but the marechal came in, and Madam de
Boufflers arrived from Paris a few moments afterwards. They did what
Madam de Luxembourg ought to have done. I suffered myself to be
flattered; I was ashamed to retract; and the only thing that
remained to be determined upon was the place of my retreat and the
time of my departure. M. de Luxembourg proposed to me to remain
incognito a few days at the castle, that we might deliberate at
leisure, and take such measures as should seem most proper; to this
I would not consent, no more than to go secretly to the temple. I
was determined to set off the same day rather than remain concealed in
any place whatever.
  Knowing I had secret and powerful enemies in the kingdom, I thought,
notwithstanding my attachment to France, I ought to quit it, the
better to insure my future tranquillity. My first intention was to
retire to Geneva, but a moment of reflection was sufficient to
dissuade me from committing that act of folly; I knew the ministry
of France, more powerful at Geneva than at Paris, would not leave me
more at peace in one of these cities than in the other, were a
resolution taken to torment me. I was also convinced the Discourse
upon Inequality had excited against me in the council a hatred the
more dangerous as the council dared not make it manifest. I had also
learned, that when the Nouvelle Heloise appeared, the same council had
immediately forbidden the sale of that work, upon the solicitation
of Doctor Tronchin; but, perceiving the example not to be imitated,
even in Paris, the members were ashamed of what they had done, and
withdrew the prohibition.
  I had no doubt that, finding in the present case a more favorable
opportunity, they would be very careful to take advantage of it.
Notwithstanding exterior appearances, I knew there reigned against
me in the heart of every Genevese a secret jealousy, which, in the
first favorable moment, would publicly show itself. Nevertheless,
the love of my country called me to it, and could I have flattered
myself I should there have lived in peace, I should not have
hesitated; but neither honor nor reason permitting me to take refuge
as a fugitive in a place of which I was a citizen, I resolved to
approach it only, and to wait in Switzerland until something
relative to me should be determined upon in Geneva. This state of
uncertainty did not, as it will soon appear, continue long.
  Madam de Boufflers highly disapproved this resolution, and renewed
her efforts to induce me to go to England, but all she could say was
of no effect; I have never loved England nor the English, and the
eloquence of Madam de Boufflers, far from conquering my repugnancy,
seemed to increase it without my knowing why. Determined to set off
the same day, I was from the morning inaccessible to everybody, and La
Roche, whom I sent to fetch my papers, would not tell Theresa
whether or not I was gone. Since I had determined to write my own
memoirs, I had collected a great number of letters and other papers,
so that he was obliged to return several times. A part of these
papers, already selected, were laid aside, and I employed the
morning in sorting the rest, that I might take with me such only as
were necessary and destroy what remained. M. de Luxembourg was kind
enough to assist me in this business, which we could not finish before
it was necessary I should set off, and I had not time to burn a single
paper. The marechal offered to take upon himself to sort what I should
leave behind me, and throw into the fire every sheet that he found
useless, without trusting to any person whomsoever, and to send me
those of which he should make choice. I accepted his offer, very
glad to be delivered from that care, that I might pass the few hours I
had to remain with persons so dear to me, from whom I was going to
separate forever. He took the key of the chamber in which I had left
these papers; and, at my earnest solicitation, sent for my poor
"aunt," who, not knowing what was become of me, or what was to
become of herself, and in momentary expectation of the arrival of
the officers of justice, without knowing how to act or what to
answer them, was miserable to an extreme. La Roche accompanied her
to the castle in silence; she thought I was already far from
Montmorency; on perceiving me, she made the place resound with her
cries, and threw herself into my arms. Oh, friendship, affinity of
sentiment, habit and intimacy.
  In this pleasing yet cruel moment, the remembrance of so many days
of happiness, tenderness, and peace passed together, augmented the
grief of a first separation after an union of seventeen years,
during which we had scarcely lost sight of each other for a single
day.
  The marechal, who saw this embrace, could not suppress his tears. He
withdrew. Theresa determined never more to leave me out of her
sight. I made her feel the inconvenience of accompanying me at that
moment, and the necessity of her remaining to take care of my
effects and collect my money. When an order is made to arrest a man,
it is customary to seize his papers and put a seal upon his effects,
or to make an inventory of them and appoint a guardian to whose care
they are intrusted. It was necessary Theresa should remain to
observe what passed, and get everything settled in the most
advantageous manner possible. I promised her she should shortly come
to me; the marechal confirmed my promise; but I did not choose to tell
her to what place I was going, that, in case of being interrogated
by the persons who came to take me into custody, she might with
truth plead ignorance upon that head. In embracing her the moment
before we separated I felt within me a most extraordinary emotion, and
I said to her with an agitation which, alas! was but too prophetic:
"My dear girl, you must arm yourself with courage. You have partaken
of my prosperity; it now remains to you, since you have chosen it,
to partake of my misery. Expect nothing in future but insult and
calamity in following me. The destiny begun for me by this
melancholy day will pursue me until my latest hour."
  I had now nothing to think of but my departure. The officers were to
arrive at ten o'clock. It was four in the afternoon when I set off,
and they were not yet come. It was determined I should take post. I
had no carriage. The marechal made me a present of a cabriolet, and
lent me horses and a postillion the first stage, where, in consequence
of the measures he had taken, I had no difficulty in procuring others.
  As I had not dined at table, nor made my appearance in the castle,
the ladies came to bid me adieu in the entresol where I had passed the
day. Madam de Luxembourg embraced me several times with a melancholy
air; but I did not in these embraces feel the pressing I had done in
those she had lavished upon me two or three years before. Madam de
Boufflers also embraced me, and said to me many civil things. An
embrace which surprised me more than all the rest had done was one
from Madam de Mirepoix, for she also was at the castle. Madam la
Marechale de Mirepoix is a person extremely cold, decent, and
reserved, and did not, at least as she appeared to me, seem quite
exempt from the natural haughtiness of the house of Lorraine. She
had never shown me much attention. Whether, flattered by an honor I
had not expected, I endeavored to enhance the value of it; or that
there really was in the embrace a little of that commiseration natural
to generous hearts, I found in her manner and look something
energetical which penetrated me. I have since that time frequently
thought that, acquainted with my destiny, she could not refrain from a
momentary concern for my fate.
  The marechal did not open his mouth; he was as pale as death. He
would absolutely accompany me to the carriage which waited at the
watering place. We crossed the garden without uttering a single
word. I had a key of the park with which I opened the gate, and
instead of putting it again into my pocket, I held it out to the
marechal without saying a word. He took it with a vivacity which
surprised me, and which has since frequently intruded itself upon my
thoughts. I have not in my whole life had a more bitter moment than
that of this separation. Our embrace was long and silent: we both felt
that this was our last adieu.
  Between La Barre and Montmorency I met, in a hired carriage, four
men in black, who saluted me smiling. According to what Theresa has
since told me of the officers of justice, the hour of their arrival
and their manner of behavior, I have no doubt, that they were the
persons I met, especially as the order to arrest me, instead of
being made out at seven o'clock, as I had been told it would, had
not been given till noon. I had to go through Paris. A person in a
cabriolet is not much concealed. I saw several persons in the
streets who saluted me with an air of familiarity, but I did not
know one of them. The same evening I changed my route to pass
Villeroy. At Lyons the couriers were conducted to the commandant. This
might have been embarrassing to a man unwilling either to lie or
change his name. I went with a letter from Madam de Luxembourg to
beg M. de Villeroy would spare me this disagreeable ceremony. M. de
Villeroy gave me a letter of which I made no use, because I did not go
through Lyons. This letter still remains seated up amongst my
papers. The duke pressed me to sleep at Villeroy, but I preferred
returning to the great road, which I did, arid traveled two more
stages the same evening.
  My carriage was inconvenient and uncomfortable, and I was too much
indisposed to go far in a day. My appearance besides was not
sufficiently distinguished for me to be well served, and in France
post-horses feel the whip in proportion to the favorable opinion the
postillion has of his temporary master. By paying the guides
generously I thought I should make up for my shabby appearance: this
was still worse. They took me for a worthless fellow who was
carrying orders, and, for the first time in my life, traveling post.
From that moment I had nothing but worn-out hacks, and I became the
sport of the postillions. I ended as I should have begun by being
patient, holding my tongue, and suffering myself to be driven as my
conductors thought proper.
  I had sufficient matter of reflection to prevent me from being weary
on the road, employing myself in the recollection of that which had
just happened; but this was neither my turn of mind nor the
inclination of my heart. The facility with which I forget past
evils, however recent they may be, is astonishing. The remembrance
of them becomes feeble, and, sooner or later, effaced, in the
inverse proportion to the greater degree of fear with which the
approach of them inspires me. My cruel imagination, incessantly
tormented by the apprehension of evils still at a distance, diverts my
attention, and prevents me from recollecting those which are past.
Caution is needless after the evil has happened, and it is time lost
to give it a thought. I, in some measure, put a period to my
misfortunes before they happen: the more I have suffered at their
approach the greater is the facility with which I forget them; whilst,
on the contrary, incessantly recollecting my past happiness, I, if I
may so speak, enjoy it a second time at pleasure. It is to this
happy disposition I am indebted for an exemption from that ill humor
which ferments in a vindictive mind, by the continual remembrance of
injuries received, and torments it with all the evil it wishes to do
its enemy. Naturally choleric, I have felt all the force of anger,
which in the first moments has sometimes been carried to fury, but a
desire of vengeance never took root within me. I think too little of
the offense to give myself much trouble about the offender. I think of
the injury I have received from him on account of that he may do me
a second time, but were I certain he would never do me another the
first would be instantly forgotten. Pardon of offenses is
continually preached to us. I knew not whether or not my heart would
be capable of overcoming its hatred, for it never yet felt that
passion, and I give myself too little concern about my enemies to have
the merit of pardoning them. I will not say to what a degree, in order
to torment me, they torment themselves. I am at their mercy, they have
unbounded power, and make of it what use they please. There is but one
thing in which I set them at defiance: which is in tormenting
themselves about me, to force me to give myself the least trouble
about them.
  The day after my departure I had so perfectly forgotten what had
passed, the parliament, Madam de Pompadour, M. de Choiseul, Grimm, and
D'Alembert, with their conspiracies, that, had not it been for the
necessary precautions during the journey I should have thought no more
of them. The remembrance of one thing which supplied the place of
all these was what I had read the evening before my departure. I
recollect, also, the pastorals of Gessner, which his translator Hubert
had sent me a little time before. These two ideas occurred to me so
strongly, and were connected in such a manner in my mind, that I was
determined to endeavor to unite them by treating after the manner of
Gessner the subject of the Levite of Ephraim. His pastoral and
simple style appeared to me but little fitted to so horrid a
subject, and it was not to be presumed the situation I was then in
would furnish me with such ideas as would enliven it. However, I
attempted the thing, solely to amuse myself in my cabriolet, and
without the least hope of success. I had no sooner begun than I was
astonished at the liveliness of my ideas, and the facility with
which I expressed them. In three days I composed the first three
cantos of the little poem which I finished at Motiers, and I am
certain of not having done anything in my life in which there is a
more interesting mildness of manners, a greater brilliancy of
coloring, more simple delineations, greater exactness of proportion,
or more antique simplicity in general, notwithstanding the horror of
the subject which in itself is abominable, so that besides every other
merit I had still that of a difficulty conquered. If the Levite of
Ephraim be not the best of my works, it will ever be that most
esteemed. I have never read, nor shall I ever read it again without
feeling interiorly the applause of a heart without acrimony, which,
far from being embittered by misfortunes, is susceptible of
consolation in the midst of them, and finds within itself a resource
by which they are counterbalanced. Assemble the great philosophers, so
superior in their books to adversity which, they do not suffer,
place them in a situation similar to mine, and, in the first moments
of the indignation of their injured honor, give them a like work to
compose, and it will be seen in what manner they will acquit
themselves of the task.
  When I set off from Montmorency to go into Switzerland, I had
resolved to stop at Yverdon, at the house of my old friend Roguin, who
had several years before retired to that place, and had invited me
to go and see him. I was told Lyons was not the direct road, for which
reason I avoided going through it. But I was obliged to pass through
Besancon, a fortified town, and consequently subject to the same
inconvenience. I took it into my head to turn about and to go to
Salins, under the pretense of going to see M. de Mairan, the nephew of
M. Dupin, who had an employment at the salt-works, and formerly had
given me many invitations to his house. The expedient succeeded: M. de
Mairan was not in the way, and, happily, not being obliged to stop,
I continued my journey without being spoken to by anybody.
  The moment I was within the territory of Berne, I ordered the
postillion to stop; I got out of my carriage, prostrated myself,
kissed the ground, and exclaimed in a transport of joy: "Heaven, the
protector of virtue, be praised, I touch a land of liberty!" Thus,
blind and unsuspecting in my hopes, have I ever been passionately
attached to that which was to make me unhappy. The man thought me mad.
I got into the carriage, and a few hours afterwards I had the pure and
lively satisfaction of feeling myself pressed within the arms of the
respectable Roguin. Ah! let me breathe for a moment with this worthy
host! It is necessary I should gain strength and courage before I
proceed further. I shall soon find that in my way which will give
employment to them both. It is not without reason that I have been
diffuse in the recital of all the circumstances I have been able to
recollect. Although they may seem uninteresting, yet, when once the
thread of the conspiracy is got hold of, they may throw some light
upon the progress of it; and, for instance, without giving the first
idea of the problem I am going to propose, afford some aid in
resolving it.
  Suppose that, for the execution of the conspiracy of which I was the
object, my absence was absolutely necessary, everything tending to
that effect could not have happened otherwise than it did; but if
without suffering myself to be alarmed by the nocturnal embassy of
Madam de Luxembourg, I had continued to hold out, and, instead of
remaining at the castle, had returned to my bed and quietly slept
until morning, should I have equally had an order of arrest made out
against me? This is a great question upon which the solution of many
others depends, and for the examination of it, the hour of the
comminatory decree of arrest, and that of the real decree may be
remarked to advantage. A rude but sensible example of the importance
of the least detail in the exposition of facts, of which the secret
causes are sought for to discover them by induction.
 


                       BOOK XII

                         [1762]

  HERE commences the work of darkness, in which I have for the last
eight years been enveloped, though it has not by any means been
possible for me to penetrate the dreadful obscurity. In the abyss of
evil into which I am plunged, I feel the blows reach me, without
perceiving the hand by which they are directed or the means it
employs. Shame and misfortune seem of themselves to fall upon me. When
in the affliction of my heart I suffer a groan to escape me, I have
the appearance of a man who complains without reason, and the
authors of my ruin have the inconceivable art of rendering the public,
unknown to itself, or without its perceiving the effects of it,
accomplice in their conspiracy. Therefore, in my narrative of
circumstances relative to myself, of the treatment I have received,
and all that has happened to me, I shall not be able to indicate the
hand by which the whole has been directed, nor assign the causes,
while I state the effect. The primitive causes are all given in the
preceding books; and everything in which I am interested, and all
the secret motives pointed out. But it is impossible for me to
explain, even by conjecture, that in which the different causes are
combined to operate the strange events of my life. If amongst my
readers one even of them should be generous enough to wish to
examine the mystery to the bottom, and discover the truth, let him
carefully read over a second time the three preceding books,
afterwards at each fact he shall find stated in the books which
follow, let him gain such information as is within his reach, and go
back from intrigue to intrigue, and from agent to agent, until he
comes to the first mover of all. I know where his researches will
terminate; but in the meantime I lose myself in the crooked and
obscure subterraneous path through which his steps must be directed.
  During my stay at Yverdon, I became acquainted with all the family
of my friend Roguin, and amongst others with his niece, Madam Boy de
la Tour, and her daughters, whose father, as I think I have already
observed, I formerly knew at Lyons. She was at Yverdon, upon a visit
to her uncle and his sister; her eldest daughter, about fifteen
years of age, delighted me by her fine understanding and excellent
disposition. I conceived the most tender friendship for the mother and
the daughter. The latter was destined by M. Roguin to the colonel, his
nephew, a man already verging towards the decline of life, and who
showed me marks of great esteem and affection; but although the
heart of the uncle was set upon this marriage, which was much wished
for by the nephew also, and I was greatly desirous to promote the
satisfaction of both, the great disproportion of age, and the
extreme repugnancy of the young lady, made me join with the mother
in postponing the ceremony, and the affair was at length broken off.
The colonel has since married Mademoiselle Dillan, his relation,
beautiful, and amiable as my heart could wish, and who has made him
the happiest of husbands and fathers. However, M. Roguin has not yet
forgotten my opposition to his wishes. My consolation is in the
certainty of having discharged to him, and his family, the duty of the
most pure friendship, which does not always consist in being
agreeable, but in advising for the best.
  I did not remain long in doubt about the reception which awaited
me at Geneva, had I chosen to return to that city. My book was
burned there, and on the 18th of June, nine days after an order to
arrest me had been given at Paris, another to the same effect was
determined upon by the republic. So many incredible absurdities were
stated in this second decree, in which the ecclesiastical edict was
formally violated, that I refused to believe the first accounts I
heard of it, and when these were well confirmed, I trembled lest so
manifest an infraction of every law, beginning with that of
common-sense, should create the greatest confusion in the city. I was,
however, relieved from my fears; everything remained quiet. If there
was any rumor amongst the populace, it was unfavorable to me, and I
was publicly treated by all the gossips and pedants like a scholar
threatened with a flogging for not having said his catechism.
  These two decrees were the signal for the cry of malediction, raised
against me with unexampled fury in every part of Europe. All the
gazettes, journals, and pamphlets, rang the alarm-bell. The French
especially, that mild, generous, and polished people, who so much
pique themselves upon their attention and proper condescension to
the unfortunate, instantly forgetting their favorite virtues,
signalized themselves by the number and violence of the outrages
with which, while each seemed to strive who should afflict me most,
they overwhelmed me. I was impious, an atheist, a madman, a wild
beast, a wolf. The continuator of the Journal of Trevoux was guilty of
a piece of extravagance in attacking my pretended Lycanthropy, which
was no mean proof of his own. A stranger would have thought an
author in Paris was afraid of incurring the animadversion of the
police, by publishing a work of any kind without cramming into it some
insult to me. I sought in vain the cause of this unanimous
animosity, and was almost tempted to believe the world was gone mad.
What! said I to myself, the editor of the Paix perpetuelle, spread
discord; the publisher of the Vicaire Savoyard, impious; the writer of
the Nouvelle Heloise, a wolf; the author of Emile, a madman!
Gracious God! what then should I have been had I published the
treatise of l'Esprit, or any similar work? And yet, in the storm
raised against the author of that book, the public, far from joining
the cry of his persecutors, revenged him of them by eulogium. Let
his book and mine, the receptions the two works met with, and the
treatment of the two authors in the different countries of Europe,
be compared; and for the difference let causes satisfactory to a man
of sense be found, and I will ask no more.
  I found the residence of Yverdon so agreeable that I resolved to
yield to the solicitations of M. Roguin and his family, who were
desirous of keeping me there. M. de Moiry de Gingin, bailiff of that
city, encouraged me by his goodness to remain within his jurisdiction.
The colonel pressed me so much to accept for my habitation a little
pavilion he had in his house between the court and the garden, that
I complied with his request, and he immediately furnished it with
everything necessary for my little household establishment.
  The banneret Roguin, one of the persons who showed me the most
assiduous attention, did not leave me for an instant during the
whole day. I was much flattered by his civilities, but they
sometimes importuned me. The day on which I was to take possession
of my new habitation was already fixed, and I had written to Theresa
to come to me, when suddenly a storm was raised against me in Berne,
which was attributed to the devotees, but I have never been able to
learn the cause of it. The senate, excited against me, without my
knowing by whom, did not seem disposed to suffer me to remain
undisturbed in my retreat. The moment the bailiff was informed of
the new fermentation, he wrote in my favor to several of the members
of the government, reproaching them with their blind intolerance,
and telling them it was shameful to refuse to a man of merit, under
oppression, the asylum which such a numerous banditti found in their
states. Sensible people were of opinion the warmth of his reproaches
had rather embittered than softened the minds of the magistrates.
However this may be, neither his influence nor eloquence could ward
off the blow. Having received an intimation of the order he was to
signify to me, he gave me a previous communication of it; and that I
might wait its arrival, I resolved to set off the next day. The
difficulty was to know where to go, finding myself shut out from
Geneva and all France, and foreseeing that in this affair each state
would be anxious to imitate its neighbor.
  Madam Boy de la Tour proposed to me to go and reside in an
uninhabited but completely furnished house, which belonged to her
son in the village of Motiers, in the Val-de-Travers, in the county of
Neuchatel. I had only a mountain to cross to arrive at it. The offer
came the more opportunely, as in the states of the King of Prussia I
should naturally be sheltered from all persecution, at least
religion could not serve as a pretext for it. But a secret difficulty,
improper for me at that moment to divulge, had in it that which was
very sufficient to make me hesitate. The innate love of justice, to
which my heart was constantly subject, added to my secret
inclination to France, had inspired me with an aversion to the King of
Prussia, who, by his maxims and conduct, seemed to tread under foot
all respect for natural law and every duty of humanity. Amongst the
framed engravings, with which I had decorated my alcove at
Montmorency, was a portrait of this prince, and under it a distich,
the last line of which was as follows:

      IL pense en philosophe, et se conduit en roi.*

  * He thinks like a philosopher, and acts like a king.

  This verse, which from any other pen would have been a fine
eulogium, from mine had an unequivocal meaning, and too clearly
explained the verse by which it was preceded. The distich had been
read by everybody who came to see me, and my visitors were numerous.
The Chevalier de Lorenzi had even written it down to give it to
D'Alembert, and I had no doubt but D'Alembert had taken care to make
my court with it to the prince. I had also aggravated this first fault
by a passage in Emilius, where, under the name of Adrastus, king of
the Daunians, it was clearly seen whom I had in view, and the remark
had not escaped critics, because Madam de Boufflers had several
times mentioned the subject to me. I was, therefore, certain of
being inscribed in red ink in the registers of the King of Prussia,
and besides, supposing his majesty to have the principles I had
dared to attribute to him, he, for that reason, could not but be
displeased with my writings and their author; for everybody knows
the worthless part of mankind, and tyrants have never failed to
conceive the most mortal hatred against me, solely on reading my
works, without being acquainted with my person.
  However, I had presumption enough to depend upon his mercy, and
was far from thinking I ran much risk. I knew none but weak men were
slaves to the base passions, and that these had but little power
over strong minds, such as I had always thought his to be. According
to his art of reigning, I thought he could not but show himself
magnanimous on this occasion, and that being so in fact was not
above his character. I thought a mean and easy vengeance would not for
a moment counterbalance his love of glory, and putting myself in his
place, his taking advantage of circumstances to overwhelm with the
weight of his generosity a man who had dared to think ill of him,
did not appear to me impossible. I therefore went to settle at
Motiers, with a confidence of which I imagined he would feel all the
value, and said to myself: When Jean-Jacques rises to the elevation of
Coriolanus, will Frederic sink below the General of the Volsci?
  Colonel Roguin insisted on crossing the mountain with me, and
installing me at Motiers. A sister-in-law to Madam Boy de la Tour,
named Madam Girardier, to whom the house in which I was going to
live was very convenient, did not see me arrive there with pleasure;
however, she with a good grace put me in possession of my lodging, and
I ate with her until Theresa came, and my little establishment was
formed.
  Perceiving at my departure from Montmorency I should in future be
a fugitive upon the earth, I hesitated about permitting her to come to
me and partake of the wandering life to which I saw myself
condemned. I felt the nature of our relation to each other was about
to change, and that what until then had on my part been favor and
friendship, would in future become so on hers. If her attachment was
proof against my misfortunes, to this I knew she must become a victim,
and that her grief would add to my pain. Should my disgrace weaken her
affections, she would make me consider her constancy as a sacrifice,
and instead of feeling the pleasure I had in dividing with her my last
morsel of bread, she would see nothing but her own merit in
following me wherever I was driven by fate.
  I must say everything; I have never concealed the vices either of my
poor mamma or myself; I cannot be more favorable to Theresa, and
whatever pleasure I may have in doing honor to a person who is dear to
me, I will not disguise the truth, although it may discover in her
an error, if an involuntary change of the affections of the heart be
one. I had long perceived hers to grow cooler towards me, and that she
was no longer for me what she had been in our younger days. Of this
I was the more sensible, as for her I was what I had always been. I
fell into the same inconvenience as that of which I had felt the
effect with mamma, and this effect was the same now I was with
Theresa. Let us not seek for perfection, which nature never
produces; it would be the same thing with any other woman. The
manner in which I had disposed of my children, however reasonable it
had appeared to me, had not always left my heart at ease. While
writing my Traite de l'Education, I felt I had neglected duties with
which it was not possible to dispense. Remorse at length became so
strong that it almost forced from me a public confession of my fault
at the beginning of my Emilius, and the passage is so clear, that it
is astonishing any person should, after reading it, have had the
courage to reproach me with my error. My situation was however still
the same, or something worse, by the animosity of my enemies, who
sought to find me in a fault. I feared a relapse, and unwilling to run
the risk, I preferred abstinence to exposing Theresa to a similar
mortification. I had besides remarked that a connection with women was
prejudicial to my health; this double reason made me form
resolutions to which I had sometimes but badly kept, but for the
last three or four years I had more constantly adhered to them. It was
in this interval I had remarked Theresa's coolness; she had the same
attachment to me from duty, but not the least from love. Our
intercourse naturally became less agreeable, and I imagined that,
certain of the continuation of my cares wherever she might be, she
would choose to stay at Paris rather than to wander with me. Yet she
had given such signs of grief at our parting, had required of me
such positive promises that we should meet again, and, since my
departure, had expressed to the Prince de Conti and M. de Luxembourg
so strong a desire of it, that, far from having the courage to speak
to her of separation, I scarcely had enough to think of it myself; and
after having felt in my heart how impossible it was for me to do
without her, all I thought of afterwards was to recall her to me as
soon as possible. I wrote to her to this effect, and she came. It
was scarcely two months since I had quitted her; but it was our
first separation after an union of so many years. We had both of us
felt it most cruelly. What emotion in our first embrace! O how
delightful are the tears of tenderness and joy! How does my heart
drink them up! Why have not I had reason to shed them more frequently?
  On my arrivel at Motiers I had written to Lord Keith, marshal of
Scotland, and governor of Neuchatel, informing him of my retreat
into the states of his Prussian majesty, and requesting of him his
protection. He answered me with his well-known generosity, and in
the manner I had expected from him. He invited me to his house. I went
with M. Martinet, lord of the manor of Val-de-Travers, who was in
great favor with his excellency. The venerable appearance of this
illustrious and virtuous Scotchman, powerfully affected my heart,
and from that instant began between him and me the strong
attachment, which on my part still remains the same, and would be so
on his, had not the traitors, who have deprived me of all the
consolations of life, taken advantage of my absence to deceive his old
age and depreciate me in his esteem.
  George Keith, hereditary marshal of Scotland, and brother to the
famous General Keith, who lived gloriously and died in the bed of
honor, had quitted his country at a very early age, and was proscribed
on account of his attachment to the house of Stuart. With that
house, however, he soon became disgusted by the unjust and
tyrannical spirit he remarked in the ruling character of the Stuart
family. He lived a long time in Spain, the climate of which pleased
him exceedingly, and at length attached himself, as his brother had
done, to the service of the King of Prussia, who knew men and gave
them the reception they merited. His majesty received a great return
for this reception, in the services rendered him by Marshal Keith, and
by what was infinitely more precious, the sincere friendship of his
lordship. The great mind of this worthy man, haughty and republican,
could stoop to no other yoke than that of friendship, but to this it
was so obedient, that with very different maxims he saw nothing but
Frederic the moment he became attached to him. The king charged the
marshal with affairs of importance, sent him to Paris, to Spain, and
at length, seeing he was already advanced in years, let him retire
with the government of Neuchatel, and the delightful employment of
passing there the remainder of his life in rendering the inhabitants
happy.
  The people of Neuchatel, whose manners are trivial, know not how
to distinguish solid merit, and suppose wit to consist in long
discourses. When they saw a sedate man of simple manners appear
amongst them, they mistook his simplicity for haughtiness, his
candor for rusticity, his laconism for stupidity, and rejected his
benevolent cares, because, wishing to be useful, and not being a
sycophant, he knew not how to flatter people he did not esteem. In the
ridiculous affair of the minister Petitpierre, who was displaced by
his colleagues, for having been unwilling they should be eternally
damned, my lord, opposing the usurpations of the ministers, saw the
whole country of which he took the part, rise up against him, and when
I arrived there the stupid murmur had not entirely subsided. He passed
for a man influenced by the prejudices with which he was inspired by
others, and of all the imputations brought against him it was the most
devoid of truth. My first sentiment on seeing this venerable old
man, was that of tender commiseration, on account of his extreme
leanness of body, years having already left him little else but skin
and bone; but when I raised my eyes to his animated, open, noble
countenance, I felt a respect, mingled with confidence, which absorbed
every other sentiment. He answered the very short compliment I made
him when first I came into his presence by speaking of something else,
as if I had already been a week in his house. He did not bid us sit
down. The stupid chatelain, the lord of the manor, remained
standing. For my part I at first sight saw in the fine and piercing
eye of his lordship something so conciliating that, feeling myself
entirely at ease, I without ceremony, took my seat by his side upon
the sofa. By the familiarity of his manner I immediately perceived the
liberty I took gave him pleasure, and that he said to himself: This is
not a Neuchatelois.
  Singular effect of the similarity of characters! At an age when
the heart loses its natural warmth, that of this good old man grew
warm by his attachment to me to a degree which surprised everybody. He
came to see me at Motiers under the pretense of quail shooting, and
stayed there two days without touching a gun. We conceived such a
friendship for each other that we knew not how to live separate; the
castle of Colombier, where he passed the summer, was six leagues
from Motiers; I went there at least once a fortnight, and made a
stay of twenty-four hours, and then returned like a pilgrim with my
heart full of affection for my host. The emotion I had formerly
experienced in my journeys from the Hermitage to Eaubonne was
certainly very different, but it was not more pleasing than that
with which I approached Colombier.
  What tears of tenderness have I shed when on the road to it, while
thinking of the paternal goodness, amiable virtues, and charming
philosophy of this respectable old man! I called him father, and he
called me son. These affectionate names give, in some measure, an idea
of the attachment by which we were united, but by no means that of the
want we felt of each other, nor of our continual desire to be
together. He would absolutely give me an apartment at the castle of
Colombier, and for a long time pressed me to take up my residence in
that in which I lodged during my visits. I at length told him I was
more free and at my ease in my own house, and that I had rather
continue until the end of my life to come and see him. He approved
of my candor, and never afterwards spoke to me on the subject. Oh,
my good lord! Oh, my worthy father! How is my heart still moved when I
think of your goodness? Ah, barbarous wretches! how deeply did they
wound me when they deprived me of your friendship! But no, great
man, you are and will ever be the same for me, who am still the
same. You have been deceived, but you are not changed.
  My lord marechal is not without faults; he is a man of wisdom, but
he is still a man. With the greatest penetration, the nicest
discrimination, and the most profound knowledge of men, he sometimes
suffers himself to be deceived, and never recovers his error. His
temper is very singular and foreign to his general turn of mind. He
seems to forget the people he sees every day, and thinks of them in
a moment when they least expect it; his attention seems ill-timed; his
presents are dictated by caprice and not by propriety. He gives or
sends in an instant whatever comes into his head, be the value of it
ever so small. A young Genevese, desirous of entering into the service
of Prussia, made a personal application to him; his lordship,
instead of giving him a letter, gave him a little bag of peas, which
he desired him to carry to the king. On receiving this singular
recommendation his majesty gave a commission to the bearer of it.
These elevated geniuses have between themselves a language which the
vulgar will never understand. The whimsical manner of my lord
marechal, something like the caprice of a fine woman, rendered him
still more interesting to me. I was certain, and afterwards had
proofs, that it had not the least influence over his sentiments, nor
did it affect the cares prescribed by friendship on serious occasions,
yet in his manner of obliging there is the same singularity as in
his manners in general. Of this I will give one instance relative to a
matter of no great importance. The journey from Motiers to Colombier
being too long for me to perform in one day, I commonly divided it
by setting off after dinner and sleeping at Brot, which is half way.
The landlord of the house where I stopped, named Sandoz, having to
solicit at Berlin a favor of importance to him, begged I would request
his excellency to ask it in his behalf. "Most willingly," said I,
and took him with me. I left him in the antechamber, and mentioned the
matter to his lordship, who returned me no answer. After passing
with him the whole morning, I saw as I crossed the hall to go to
dinner, poor Sandoz, who was fatigued to death with waiting.
Thinking the governor had forgotten what I had said to him, I again
spoke of the business before we sat down to table, but still
received no answer. I thought this manner of making me feel I was
importunate rather severe, and, pitying the poor man in waiting,
held my tongue. On my return the next day I was much surprised at
the thanks he returned me for the good dinner his excellency had given
him after receiving his paper. Three weeks afterwards his lordship
sent him the rescript he had solicited, dispatched by the minister,
and signed by the king, and this without having said a word either
to myself or Sandoz concerning the business, about which I thought
he did not choose to give himself the least concern.
  I could wish incessantly to speak of George Keith; from him proceeds
my recollection of the last happy moments I have enjoyed; the rest
of my life, since our separation, has been passed in affliction and
grief of heart. The remembrance of this is so melancholy and
confused that it was impossible for me to observe the least order in
what I write, so that in future I shall be under the necessity of
stating facts without giving them a regular arrangement.
  I was soon relieved from my inquietude arising from the
uncertainty of my asylum, by the answer from his majesty to the lord
marshal, in whom, as it will readily be believed, I had found an
able advocate. The king not only approved of what he had done, but
desired him, for I must relate everything, to give me twelve louis.
The good old man, rather embarrassed by the commission, and not
knowing how to execute it properly, endeavored to soften the insult by
transforming the money into provisions, and writing to me that he
had received orders to furnish me with wood and coal to begin my
little establishment; he moreover added, and perhaps from himself,
that his majesty would willingly build me a little house, such a one
as I should choose to have, provided I would fix upon the ground. I
was extremely sensible of the kindness of the last offer, which made
me forget the weakness of the other. Without accepting either, I
considered Frederic as my benefactor and protector, and became so
sincerely attached to him, that from that moment I interested myself
as much in his glory as until then I had thought his successes unjust.
At the peace he made soon after, I expressed my joy by an illumination
in a very good taste: it was a string of garlands, with which I
decorated the house I inhabited, and in which, it is true, I had the
vindictive haughtiness to spend almost as much money as he had
wished to give me. The peace ratified, I thought as he was at the
highest pinnacle of military and political fame, he would think of
acquiring that of another nature, by reanimating his states,
encouraging in them commerce and agriculture, creating a new soil,
covering it with a new people, maintaining peace amongst his
neighbors, and becoming the arbitrator, after having been the
terror, of Europe. He was in a situation to sheath his sword without
danger, certain that no sovereign would oblige him again to draw it.
Perceiving he did not disarm, I was afraid he would profit but
little by the advantages he had gained, and that he would be great
only by halves. I dared to write to him upon the subject, and with a
familiarity of a nature to please men of his character, conveying to
him the sacred voice of truth, which but few kings are worthy to hear.
The liberty I took was a secret between him and myself. I did not
communicate it even to the lord marshal, to whom I sent my letter to
the king sealed up. His lordship forwarded my dispatch without
asking what it contained. His majesty returned me no answer, and the
marshal going soon after to Berlin, the king told him he had
received from me a scolding. By this I understood my letter had been
ill received, and that the frankness of my zeal had been mistaken
for the rusticity of a pedant. In fact, this might possibly be the
case; perhaps I did not say what was necessary, nor in the manner
proper to the occasion. All I can answer for is the sentiment which
induced me to take up my pen.
  Shortly after my establishment at Motiers, Travers having every
possible assurance that I should be suffered to remain there in peace,
I took the Armenian habit. This was not the first time I had thought
of doing it. I had formerly had the same intention, particularly at
Montmorency, where the frequent use of probes often obliging me to
keep my chamber, made me more clearly perceive the advantages of a
long robe. The convenience of an Armenian tailor, who frequently
came to see a relation he had at Montmorency, almost tempted me to
determine on taking this new dress, troubling myself but little
about what the world would say of it. Yet, before I concluded upon the
matter, I wished to take the opinion of M. de Luxembourg, who
immediately advised me to follow my inclination. I therefore
procured a little Armenian wardrobe, but on account of the storm
raised against me, I was induced to postpone making use of it until
I should enjoy tranquillity, and it was not until some months
afterwards that, forced by new attacks of my disorder, I thought I
could properly, and without the least risk, put on my new dress at
Motiers, especially after having consulted the pastor of the place,
who told me I might wear it even in the temple without indecency. I
then adopted the waistcoat, caffetan, fur bonnet, and girdle; and
after having in this dress attended divine service, I saw no
impropriety in going in it to visit his lordship. His excellency, on
seeing me clothed in this manner, made me no other compliment than
that which consisted in saying "Salaam alek," i.e., "Peace be with
you;" the common Turkish salutation; after which nothing more was said
upon the subject, and I continued to wear my new dress.
  Having quite abandoned literature, all I now thought of was
leading a quiet life, and one as agreeable as I could make it. When
alone, I have never felt weariness of mind, not even in complete
inaction; my imagination filling up every void, was sufficient to keep
up my attention. The inactive babbling of a private circle, where,
seated opposite to each other, they who speak move nothing but the
tongue, is the only thing I have ever been unable to support. When
walking and rambling about there is some satisfaction in conversation;
the feet and eyes do something; but to hear people with their arms
across speak of the weather, of the biting of flies, or what is
still worse, compliment each other, is to me an insupportable torment.
That I might not live like a savage, I took it into my head to learn
to make laces. Like the women, I carried my cushion with me when I
went to make visits, or sat down to work at my door, and chatted
with passers-by. This made me the better support the emptiness of
babbling, and enabled me to pass my time with my female neighbors
without weariness. Several of these were very amiable and not devoid
of wit. One in particular, Isabelle d'Yvernois, daughter of the
attorney-general of Neuchatel, I found so estimable as to induce me to
enter with her into terms of particular friendship, from which she
derived some advantage by the useful advice I gave her, and the
services she received from me on occasions of importance, so that
now a worthy and virtuous mother of a family, she is perhaps
indebted to me for her reason, her husband, her life, and happiness.
On my part, I received from her gentle consolation, particularly
during a melancholy winter, throughout the whole of which, when my
sufferings were most cruel, she came to pass with Theresa and me
long evenings, which she made very short to us by her agreeable
conversation, and our mutual openness of heart. She called me papa,
and I called her daughter, and these names, which we still give to
each other, will, I hope, continue to be as dear to her as they are to
me. That my laces might be of some utility, I gave them to my young
female friends at their marriages, upon condition of their suckling
their children; Isabella's eldest sister had one upon these terms, and
well deserved it by her observance of them; Isabella herself also
received another, which, by intention, she as fully merited. She has
not been happy enough to be able to pursue her inclination. When I
sent the laces to the two sisters, I wrote each of them a letter;
the first has been shown about in the world; the second has not the
same celebrity: friendship proceeds with less noise.
  Amongst the connections I made in my neighborhood, of which I will
not enter into a detail, I must mention that with Colonel Pury, who
had a house upon the mountain, where he came to pass the summer. I was
not anxious to become acquainted with him, because I knew he was
upon bad terms at court, and with the lord marshal, whom he did not
visit. Yet, as he came to see me, and showed me much attention, I
was under the necessity of returning his visit; this was repeated, and
we sometimes dined with each other. At his house I became acquainted
with M. du Perou, and afterwards too intimately connected with him
to pass his name over in silence.
  M. du Perou was an American, son to a commandant of Surinam, whose
successor, M. le Chambrier, of Neuchatel, married his widow. Left a
widow a second time, she came with her son to live in the country of
her second husband.
  Du Perou, an only son, very rich, and tenderly beloved by his
mother, had been carefully brought up, and his education was not
lost upon him. He had acquired much knowledge, a taste for the arts,
and piqued himself upon his having cultivated his rational faculty:
his Dutch appearance, yellow complexion, and silent and close
disposition, favored this opinion. Although young, he was already deaf
and gouty. This rendered his motions deliberate and very grave, and
although he was fond of disputing, he in general spoke but little
because his hearing was bad. I was struck with his exterior, and
said to myself, this is a thinker, a man of wisdom, such a one as
anybody would be happy to have for a friend. He frequently addressed
himself to me without paying the least compliment, and this
strengthened the favorable opinion I had already formed of him. He
said but little to me of myself or my books, and still less of
himself; he was not destitute of ideas, and what he said was just.
This justness and equality attracted my regard. He had neither the
elevation of mind, nor the discrimination of the lord marshal, but
he had all his simplicity; this was still representing him in
something. I did not become infatuated with him, but he acquired my
attachment from esteem; and by degrees this esteem led to
friendship, and I totally forgot the objection I made to the Baron
Holbach: that he was too rich.
  For a long time I saw but little of Du Perou, because I did not go
to Neuchatel, and he came but once a year to the mountain of Colonel
Pury. Why did not I go to Neuchatel? This proceeded from a
childishness upon which I must not be silent.
  Although protected by the King of Prussia and the lord marshal,
while I avoided persecution in my asylum, I did not avoid the
murmurs of the public, of municipal magistrates and ministers. After
what had happened in France it became fashionable to insult me;
these people would have been afraid to seem to disapprove of what my
persecutors had done by not imitating them. The classe of Neuchatel,
that is, the ministers of that city, gave the impulse, by
endeavoring to move the council of state against me. This attempt
not having succeeded, the ministers addressed themselves to the
municipal magistrate, who immediately prohibited my book, treating
me on all occasions with but little civility, and saying, that had
J. wished to reside in the city I should not have been suffered to
do it. They filled their Mercury with absurdities and the most
stupid hypocrisy, which, although it made every man of sense laugh,
animated the people against me. This, however, did not prevent them
from setting forth that I ought to be very grateful for their
permitting me to live at Motiers, where they had no authority; they
would willingly have measured me the air by the pint, provided I had
paid for it a dear price. They would have it that I was obliged to
them for the protection the king granted me in spite of the efforts
they incessantly made to deprive me of it. Finally, failing of
success, after having done me all the injury they could, and defamed
me to the utmost of their power, they made a merit of their impotence,
by boasting of their goodness in suffering me to stay in their
country. I ought to have laughed at their vain efforts, but I was
foolish enough to be vexed at them, and had the weakness to be
unwilling to go to Neuchatel, to which I yielded for almost two years,
as if it was not doing too much honor to such wretches, to pay
attention to their proceedings, which, good or bad, could not be
imputed to them, because they never act but from a foreign impulse.
Besides, minds without sense or knowledge, whose objects of esteem are
influence, power, and money, are far from imagining even that some
respect is due to talents, and that it is dishonorable to injure and
insult them.
  A certain mayor of a village, who for sundry malversations, had been
deprived of his office, said to the lieutenant of Valde-Travers, the
husband of Isabella: "I am told this Rousseau has great wit; bring him
to me that I may see whether he has or not." The disapprobation of
such a man ought certainly to have no effect upon those on whom it
falls.
  After the treatment I had received at Paris, Geneva, Berne, and even
at Neuchatel, I expected no favor from the pastor of this place. I
had, however, been recommended to him by Madam Boy de la Tour, and
he had given me a good reception; but in that country where every
new-comer is indiscriminately flattered, civilities signify but
little. Yet, after my solemn union with the reformed church, and
living in a Protestant country, I could not, without failing in my
engagements, as well as in the duty of a citizen neglect the public
profession of the religion into which I had entered; I therefore
attended divine service. On the other hand, had I gone to the holy
table, I was afraid of exposing myself to a refusal, and it was by
no means probable, that after the tumult excited at Geneva by the
council, and at Neuchatel by the classe (the ministers), he would,
without difficulty, administer to me the sacrament in his church.
The time of communion approaching, I wrote to M. de Montmollin, the
minister, to prove to him my desire of communicating, and declaring
myself heartily united to the Protestant church; I also told him, in
order to avoid disputing upon articles of faith, that I would not
hearken to any particular explanation of the point of doctrine.
After taking these steps, I made myself easy, not doubting but M. de
Montmollin would refuse to admit me without the preliminary discussion
to which I refused to consent, and that in this manner everything
would be at an end without any fault of mine. I was deceived: when I
least expected anything of the kind, M. de Montmollin came to
declare to me not only that he admitted me to the communion under
the condition which I had proposed, but that he and the elders thought
themselves much honored by my being one of their flock. I never in
my whole life felt greater surprise or received from it more
consolation. Living always alone and unconnected, appeared to me a
melancholy destiny, especially in adversity. In the midst of so many
proscriptions and persecutions, I found it extremely agreeable to be
able to say to myself: I am at least amongst my brethren; and I went
to the communion with an emotion of heart, and my eyes suffused with
tears of tenderness, which perhaps were the most agreeable preparation
to Him to, whose table I was drawing near.
  Sometime afterwards his lordship sent me a letter from Madam de
Boufflers, which he had received, at least I presumed so, by means
of D'Alembert, who was acquainted with the marechal. In this letter,
the first that lady had written to me after my departure from
Montmorency, she rebuked me severely for having written to M. de
Montmollin, and especially for having communicated. I the less
understood what she meant by her reproof, as after my journey to
Geneva, I had constantly declared myself a Protestant, and had gone
publicly to the Hotel de Hollande without incurring the least
censure from anybody. It appeared to me diverting enough, that Madam
de Boufflers should wish to direct my conscience in matters of
religion. However, as I had no doubt of the purity of her intention, I
was not offended by this singular sally, and I answered her without
anger, stating to her my reasons.
  Calumnies in print were still industriously circulated, and their
benign authors reproached the different powers with treating me too
mildly. For my part, I let them say and write what they pleased,
without giving myself the least concern about the matter. I was told
there was a censure from the Sorbonne, but this I could not believe.
What could the Sorbonne have to do in the matter? Did the doctors wish
to know to a certainty that I was not a Catholic? Everybody already
knew I was not one. Were they desirous of proving I was not a good
Calvinist? Of what consequence was this to them? It was taking upon
themselves a singular care, and becoming the substitutes of our
ministers. Before I saw this publication I thought it was
distributed in the name of the Sorbonne, by way of mockery: and when I
had read it I was convinced this was the case. But when at length
there was not a doubt of its authenticity, all I could bring myself to
believe was, that the learned doctors would have been better placed in
a madhouse than they were in the college.
  I was more affected by another publication, because it came from a
man for whom I always had an esteem, and whose constancy I admired,
though I pitied his blindness. I mean the mandatory letter against
me by the archbishop of Paris. I thought to return an answer to it was
a duty I owed myself. This I felt I could do without derogating from
my dignity; the case was something similar to that of the King of
Poland. I have always detested brutal disputes, after the manner of
Voltaire. I never combat but with dignity, and before I deign to
defend myself I must be certain that he by whom I am attacked will not
dishonor my retort. I had no doubt but this letter was fabricated by
the Jesuits, and although they were at that time in distress, I
discovered in it their old principle of crushing the wretched. I was
therefore at liberty to follow my ancient maxim, by honoring the
titulary author, and refuting the work, which I think I did
completely.
  I found my residence at Motiers very agreeable, and nothing was
wanting to determine me to end my days there, but a certainty of the
means of subsistence. Living is dear in that neighborhood, and all
my old projects had been overturned by the dissolution of my household
arrangements at Montmorency, the establishment of others, the sale
or squandering of my furniture, and the expenses incurred since my
departure. The little capital which remained to me daily diminished.
Two or three years were sufficient to consume the remainder without my
having the means of renewing it, except by again engaging in
literary pursuits: a pernicious profession which I had already
abandoned. Persuaded that everything which concerned me would
change, and that the public, recovered from its frenzy, would make
my persecutors blush, all my endeavors tended to prolong my
resources until this happy revolution should take place, after which I
should more at my ease choose a resource from amongst those which
might offer themselves. To this effect I took up my Dictionary of
Music, which ten years' labor had so far advanced as to leave
nothing wanting to it but the last corrections. My books, which I
had lately received, enabled me to finish this work; my papers sent me
by the same conveyance, furnished me with the means of beginning my
memoirs to which I was determined to give my whole attention. I
began by transcribing the letters into a book, by which my memory
might be guided in the order of facts and time. I had already selected
those I intended to keep for this purpose, and for ten years the
series was not interrupted. However, in preparing them for copying I
found an interruption at which I was surprised. This was for almost
six months, from October, 1756, to March following. I recollected
having put into my selection a number of letters from Diderot, De
Leyre, Madam d'Epinay, Madam de Chenonceaux, etc., which filled up the
void and were missing. What was become of them? Had any persons laid
their hands upon my papers whilst they remained in the Hotel de
Luxembourg? This was not conceivable, and I had seen M. de
Luxembourg take the key of the chamber in which I had deposited
them. Many letters from different ladies, and all those from
Diderot, were without date, on which account I had been under the
necessity of dating them from memory before they could be put in
order, and thinking I might have committed errors, I again looked them
over for the purpose of seeing whether or not I could find those which
ought to fill up the void. This experiment did not succeed. I
perceived the vacancy to be real, and that the letters had certainly
been taken away. By whom and for what purpose? This was what I could
not comprehend. These letters, written prior to my great quarrels, and
at the time of my first enthusiasm in the composition of Heloise,
could not be interesting to any person. They containing nothing more
than cavilings by Diderot, jeerings from De Leyre, assurances of
friendship from M. de Chenonceaux, and even Madam d'Epinay, with
whom I was then upon the best of terms. To whom were these letters
of consequence? To what use were they to be put? It was not until
seven years afterwards that I suspected the nature of the theft. The
deficiency being no longer doubtful, I looked over my rough drafts
to see whether or not it was the only one. I found several, which on
account of the badness of my memory, made me suppose others in the
multitude of my papers. Those I remarked were that of the Morale
Sensitive, and the extract of the adventures of Lord Edward. The last,
I confess, made me suspect Madam de Luxembourg.
  La Roche, her valet de chambre, had sent me the papers, and I
could think of nobody but herself to whom this fragment could be of
consequence; but what concern could the other give her, any more
than the rest of the letters missing, with which, even with evil
intentions, nothing to my prejudice could be done, unless they were
falsified? As for the marechal, with whose real friendship for me, and
invariable integrity, I was perfectly acquainted, I never could
suspect him for a moment. The most reasonable supposition, after
long tormenting my mind in endeavoring to discover the author of the
theft, that which imputed it to D'Alembert, who, having thrust himself
into the company of Madam de Luxembourg, might have found means to
turn over these papers, and take from amongst them such manuscripts
and letters as he might have thought proper, either for the purpose of
endeavoring to embroil me with the writer of them, or to appropriate
those he should find useful to his own private purposes. I imagined
that, deceived by the title of Morale Sensitive, he might have
supposed it to be the plan of a real treatise upon materialism, with
which he would have armed himself against me in a manner easy to be
imagined. Certain that he would soon be undeceived by reading the
sketch, and determined to quit all literary pursuits, these
larcenies gave me but little concern. They besides were not the
first the same hand had committed* upon me without having complained
of these pilferings. In a very little time I thought no more of the
trick that had been played me than if nothing had happened, and
began to collect the materials I had left for the purpose of
undertaking my projected confessions.

  * I had found in his Elemens de Musique (Elements of Music)
several things taken from what I had written for the Encyclopedie, and
which were given to him several years before the publication of his
elements. I know not what he may have had to do with a book entitled
Dictionaire des Beaux Arts (Dictionary of the Fine Arts), but I
found in it articles transcribed word for word from mine, and this
long before the same articles were printed in the Encyclopedie.

  I had long thought the company of ministers, or at least the
citizens and burgesses of Geneva, would remonstrate against the
infraction of the edict in the decree made against me. Everything
remained quiet, at least to all exterior appearance; for discontent
was general, and ready, on the first opportunity, openly to manifest
itself. My friends, or persons calling themselves such, wrote letter
after letter exhorting me to come and put myself at their head,
assuring me of public separation from the council. The fear of the
disturbance and troubles which might be caused by my presence,
prevented me from acquiescing with their desires, and, faithful to the
oath I had formerly made, never to take the least part in any civil
dissension in my country, I chose rather to let the offense remain
as it was, and banish myself forever from the country, than to
return to it by means which were violent and dangerous. It is true,
I expected the burgesses would make legal remonstrances against an
infraction in which their interests were deeply concerned; but no such
steps were taken. They who conducted the body of citizens sought
less the real redress of grievances than an opportunity to render
themselves necessary. They caballed but were silent, and suffered me
to be bespattered by the gossips and hypocrites set on to render me
odious in the eyes of the populace, and pass upon them their
boistering for a zeal in favor of religion.
  After having, during a whole year, vainly expected that some one
would remonstrate against an illegal proceeding, and seeing myself
abandoned by my fellow-citizens, I determined to renounce my
ungrateful country in which I never had lived, from which I had not
received either inheritance or services, and by which, in return for
the honor I had endeavored to do it, I saw myself so unworthily
treated by unanimous consent, since they, who should have spoken,
had remained silent. I therefore wrote to the first syndic for that
year, to Mr. Favre, if I remember right, a letter in which I
solemnly gave up my freedom of the city of Geneva, carefully observing
in it, however, that decency and moderation, from which I have never
departed in the acts of haughtiness which, in my misfortunes, the
cruelty of my enemies have frequently forced from me.
  This step opened the eyes of the citizens, who feeling they had
neglected their own interests by abandoning my defense, took my part
when it was too late. They had wrongs of their own which they joined
to mine, and made these the subject of several well-reasoned
representations, which they strengthened and extended, as the
refusal of the council, supported by the ministry of France, made them
more clearly perceive the project formed to impose on them a yoke.
These altercations produced several pamphlets which were indecisive,
until that appeared entitled Lettres ecrites de la Campagne,* a work
written in favor of the council, with infinite art, and by which the
remonstrating party, reduced to silence, was crushed for a time.
This production, a lasting monument of the rare talents of its author,
came from the Attorney-General Tronchin, a man of wit and an
enlightened understanding, well versed in the laws and government of
the republic. Siluit terra.

  * Letters written from the Country.

  The remonstrators, recovered from their first overthrow, undertook
to give an answer, and in time produced one which brought them off
tolerably well. But they all looked to me, as the only person
capable of combating a like adversary with hope of success. I
confess I was of their opinion, and excited by my former
fellow-citizens, who thought it was my duty to aid them with my pen,
as I had been the cause of their embarrassment, I undertook to
refute the Lettres ecrites de la Campagne, and parodied the title of
them by that of Lettres ecrites de la Montagne,* which I gave to mine.
I wrote this answer so secretly, that at a meeting I had at Thonon,
with the chiefs of the malcontents to talk of their affairs, and where
they showed me a sketch of their answer, I said not a word of mine,
which was quite ready, fearing obstacles might arise relative to the
impression of it, should the magistrate or my enemies hear of what I
had done. This work was, however, known in France before the
publication; but government chose rather to let it appear, than to
suffer me to guess at the means by which my secret had been
discovered. Concerning this I will state what I know, which is but
trifling: what I have conjectured shall remain with myself.

  * Letters written from the Mountain.

  I received, at Motiers, almost as many visits as at the Hermitage
and Montmorency; but these, for the most part, were a different
kind. They who had formerly come to see me were people who, having
taste, talents, and principles, something similar to mine, alleged
them as the causes of their visits, and introduced subjects on which I
could converse. At Motiers the case was different, especially with the
visitors who came from France. They were officers, or other persons
who had no taste for literature, nor had many of them read my works,
although, according to their own accounts, they had traveled thirty,
forty, sixty, and even a hundred leagues to come and see me, and
admire the illustrious man, the very celebrated, the great man, etc.
For from the time of my settling at Motiers, I received the most
impudent flattery, from which the esteem of those with whom I
associated had formerly sheltered me. As but few of my new visitors
deigned to tell me who or what they were, and as they had neither read
nor cast their eye over my works, nor had their researches and mine
been directed to the same objects, I knew not what to speak to them
upon: I waited for what they had to say, because it was for them to
know and tell me the purpose of their visit. It will naturally be
imagined this did not produce conversations very interesting to me,
although they, perhaps, were so to my visitors, according to the
information they might wish to acquire; for as I was without
suspicion, I answered, without reserve, to every question they thought
proper to ask me, and they commonly went away as well informed as
myself of the particulars of my situation.
  I was, for example, visited in this manner by M. de Feins, equerry
to the queen, and captain of cavalry, who had the patience to pass
several days at Motiers, and to follow me on foot even to La Ferriere,
leading his horse by the bridle, without having with me any point of
union, except our acquaintance with Mademoiselle Fel, and that we both
played at bilboquet.*

  * A kind of cup and ball.

  Before this I had received another visit much more extraordinary.
Two men arrived on foot, each leading a mule loaded with his little
baggage, lodging at the inn, taking care of their mules and asking
to see me. By the equipage of these muleteers they were taken for
smugglers, and the news that smugglers were come to see me was
instantly spread. Their manner of addressing me sufficiently showed
they were persons of another description; but without being
smugglers they might be adventurers, and this doubt kept me for some
time on my guard. They soon removed my apprehensions. One was M. de
Montauban, who had the title of Comte de la Tour-du-Pin, gentleman
to the dauphin; the other, M. Dastier de Carpentras, an old officer,
who had his cross of St. Louis in his pocket, because he could not
display it. These gentlemen, both very amiable, were men of sense, and
their manner of traveling, so much to my own taste, and but little
like that of French gentlemen, in some measure, gained them my
attachment, which an intercourse with them served to improve. Our
acquaintance did not end with the visit; it is still kept up, and they
have since been several times to see me, not on foot, that was very
well for the first time; but the more I have seen of these gentlemen
the less similarity have I found between their taste and mine; I
have not discovered their maxims to be such as I have ever observed,
that my writings are familiar to them, or that there is any real
sympathy between them and myself. What, therefore, did they want
with me? Why came they to see me with, such an equipage? Why repeat
their visit? Why were they so desirous of having me for their host?
I did not at the time propose to myself these questions; but they have
sometimes occurred to me since.
  Won by their advances, my heart abandoned itself without reserve,
especially to M. Dastier, with whose open countenance I was more
particularly pleased. I even corresponded with him, and when I
determined to print the Letters from the Mountain, I thought of
addressing myself to him, to deceive those by whom my packet was
waited for upon the road to Holland. He had spoken to me a good
deal, and perhaps purposely, upon the liberty of the press at Avignon;
he offered me his services should I have anything to print there: I
took advantage of the offer and sent him successively by the post my
first sheets. After having kept these for some time, he sent them back
to me, "Because," said he, "no bookseller dared to undertake them;"
and I was obliged to have recourse to Rey, taking care to send my
papers, one after the other, and not to part with those which
succeeded until I had advice of the reception of those already sent.
Before the work was published, I found it had been seen in the
office of the ministers, and D'Escherny, of Neuchatel, spoke to me
of a book, entitled, De l'Homme de la Montagne,* which D'Holbach had
told him was by me. I assured him, and it was true, that I never had
written a book which bore that tide. When the letters appeared he
became furious, and accused me of falsehood, although I had told him
truth. By this means I was certain my manuscript had been read; as I
could not doubt the fidelity of Rey, the most rational conjecture
seemed to be, that my packets had been opened at the post-house.

  * Of the Man of the Mountain.

  Another acquaintance I made much about the same time, but which
was begun by letters, was that with M. Laliaud of Nimes, who wrote
to me from Paris, begging I would send him my profile; he said he
was in want of it for my bust in marble, which Le Moine was making for
him to be placed in his library. If this was a pretense invented to
deceive me, it fully succeeded. I imagined that a man who wished to
have my bust in marble in his library had his head full of my works,
consequently of my principles, and that he loved me because his mind
was in unison with mine. It was natural this idea should seduce me.
I have since seen M. Laliaud. I found him very ready to render me many
trifling services, and to concern himself in my little affairs, but
I have my doubts of his having, in the few books he ever read,
fallen upon any one of those I have written. I do not know that he has
a library, or that such a thing is of any use to him; and for the bust
he has a bad figure in plaster, by Le Moine, from which has been
engraved a hideous portrait that bears my name, as if it bore to me
some resemblance.
  The only Frenchman who seemed to come to see me, on account of my
sentiments, and his taste for my works, was a young officer of the
regiment of Limousin, named Seguier de St. Brisson. He made a figure
in Paris, where he still perhaps distinguishes himself by his pleasing
talents and wit. He came once to Montmorency, the winter which
preceded my catastrophe. I was pleased with his vivacity. He
afterwards wrote to me at Motiers, and whether he wished to flatter
me, or that his head was turned with Emile, he informed me he was
about to quit the service to live independently, and had begun to
learn the trade of a carpenter. He had an elder brother, a captain
in the same regiment, the favorite of the mother, who, a devotee to
excess, and directed by I know not what hypocrite, did not treat the
youngest son well, accusing him of irreligion, and what was still
worse, of the unpardonable crime of being connected with me. These
were the grievances, on account of which he was determined to break
with his mother, and adopt the manner of life of which I have just
spoken, all to play the part of the young Emile. Alarmed at this
petulance, I immediately wrote to him, endeavoring to make him
change his resolution, and my exhortations were as strong as I could
make them. They had their effect. He returned to his duty, to his
mother, and took back the resignation he had given to the colonel, who
had been prudent enough to make no use of it, that the young man might
have time to reflect upon what he had done. St. Brisson, cured of
these follies, was guilty of another less alarming, but, to me, not
less disagreeable than the rest: he became an author. He
successively published two or three pamphlets which announced a man
not devoid of talents, but I have not to reproach myself with having
encouraged him by my praises to continue to write.
  Some time afterwards he came to see me, and we made together a
pilgrimage to the island of St. Pierre. During this journey I found
him different from what I saw of him at Montmorency. He had, in his
manner, something affected, which at first did not much disgust me,
although I have since thought of it to his disadvantage. He once
visited me at the hotel de St. Simon, as I passed through Paris on
my way to England. land. learned there what he had not told me, that
he lived in the great world, and often visited Madam de Luxembourg.
Whilst I was at Trie, I never heard from him, nor did he so much as
make inquiry after me, by means of his relation Mademoiselle
Seguier, my neighbor. This lady never seemed favorably disposed
towards me. In a word, the infatuation of M. de St. Brisson ended
suddenly, like the connection of M. de Feins: but this man owed me
nothing, and the former was under obligations to me, unless the
follies I prevented him from committing were nothing more than
affectation; which might very possibly be the case.
  I had visits from Geneva also. The Delucs, father and son,
successively chose me for their attendant in sickness. The father
was taken ill on the road, the son was already sick when he left
Geneva; they both came to my house. Ministers, relations,
hypocrites, and persons of every description came from Geneva and
Switzerland, not like those from France, to laugh at and admire me,
but to rebuke and catechise me. The only person amongst them, who gave
me pleasure, was Moultou, who passed with me three or four days, and
whom I wished to retain much longer; the most persevering of all,
the most obstinate, and who conquered me by importunity, was a M.
d'Ivernois, a merchant at Geneva, a French refugee, and related to the
attorney-general of Neuchatel. This man came from Geneva to Motiers
twice a year, on purpose to see me, remained with me several days
together from morning to night, accompanied me in my walks, brought me
a thousand little presents, insinuated himself in spite of me into
my confidence, and intermeddled in all my affairs, notwithstanding
there was not between him and myself the least similarity of ideas,
inclination, sentiment, or knowledge. I do not believe he ever read
a book of any kind throughout, or that he knows upon what subject mine
are written. When I began to herbalize, he followed me in my botanical
rambles, without taste for that amusement, or having anything to say
to me or I to him. He had the patience to pass with me three days in a
public house at Goumoins, whence, by wearying him and making him
feel how much he wearied me, I was in hopes of driving him. I could
not, however, shake his incredible perseverance, nor by any means
discover the motive of it.
  Amongst these connections, made and continued by force, I must not
omit the only one that was agreeable to me, and in which my heart
was really interested: this was that I had with a young Hungarian
who came to live at Neuchatel, and from that place to Motiers, a few
months after I had taken up my residence there. He was called by the
people of the country the Baron de Sauttern, by which name he had been
recommended from Zurich. He was tall, well made, had an agreeable
countenance, and mild and social qualities. He told everybody, and
gave me also to understand, that he came to Neuchatel for no other
purpose, than that of forming his youth to virtue, by his
intercourse with me. His physiognomy, manner, and behavior, seemed
well suited to his conversation, and I should have thought I failed in
one of the greatest duties had I turned my back upon a young man in
whom I perceived nothing but what was amiable, and who sought my
acquaintance from so respectable a motive. My heart knows not how to
connect itself by halves. He soon acquired my friendship, and all my
confidence, and we were presently inseparable. He accompanied me in
all my walks, and became fond of them. I took him to the marechal, who
received him with the utmost kindness. As he was yet unable to explain
himself in French, he spoke and wrote to me in Latin, I answered in
French, and this mingling of the two languages did not make our
conversations either less smooth or lively. He spoke of his family,
his affairs, his adventures, and of the court of Vienna, with the
domestic details of which he seemed well acquainted. In fine, during
two years which we passed in the greatest intimacy, I found in him a
mildness of character proof against everything, manners not only
polite but elegant, great neatness of person, an extreme decency in
his conversation, in a word, all the marks of a man born and
educated a gentleman, and which rendered him in my eyes too
estimable not to make him dear to me.
  At the time we were upon the most intimate and friendly terms,
D'Ivernois wrote to me from Geneva, putting me upon my guard against
the young Hungarian who had taken up his residence in my neighborhood;
telling me he was a spy whom the minister of France had appointed to
watch my proceedings. This information was of a nature to alarm me the
more, as everybody advised me to guard against the machinations of
persons who were employed to keep an eye upon my actions, and to
entice me into France for the purpose of betraying me.
  To shut the mouths, once for all, of these foolish advisers, I
proposed to Sauttern, without giving him the least intimation of the
information I had received, a journey on foot to Pontarlier, to
which he consented. As soon as we arrived there I put the letter
from D'Ivernois into his hands, and after giving him an ardent
embrace, I said: "Sauttern has no need of a proof of my confidence
in him, but it is necessary I should prove to the public that I know
in whom to place it." This embrace was accompanied with a pleasure
which persecutors can neither feel themselves, nor take away from
the oppressed.
  I will never believe Sauttern was a spy, nor that he betrayed me;
but I was deceived by him. When I opened to him my heart without
reserve, he constantly kept his own shut, and abused me by lies. He
invented I know not what kind of story, to prove to me his presence
was necessary in his own country. I exhorted him to return to it as
soon as possible. He set off, and when I thought he was in Hungary,
I learned he was at Strasbourgh. This was not the first time he had
been there. He had caused some disorder in a family in that city;
and the husband knowing I received him in my house, wrote to me. I
used every effort to bring the young woman back to the paths of
virtue, and Sauttern to his duty.
  When I thought they were perfectly detached from each other, they
renewed their acquaintance, and the husband had the complaisance to
receive the young man at his house; from that moment I had nothing
more to say. I found the pretended baron had imposed upon me by a
great number of lies. His name was not Sauttern, but Sauttersheim.
With respect to the title of baron, given him in Switzerland, I
could not reproach him with the impropriety, because he had never
taken it; but I have not a doubt of his being a gentleman, and the
marshal, who knew mankind, and had been in Hungary, always
considered and treated him as such.
  He had no sooner left my neighborhood, than the girl at the inn
where he ate, at Motiers, declared herself with child by him. She
was so dirty a creature, and Sauttern, generally esteemed in the
country for his conduct and purity of morals, piqued himself so much
upon cleanliness, that everybody was shocked at this impudent
pretension. The most amiable women of the country, who had vainly
displayed to him their charms, were furious: I myself was almost
choked with indignation. I used every effort to get the tongue of this
impudent woman stopped, offering to pay all expenses, and to give
security for Sauttersheim. I wrote to him in the fullest persuasion,
not only that this pregnancy could not relate to him, but it was
feigned, and the whole a machination of his enemies and mine. I wished
him to return and confound the strumpet, and those by whom she was
dictated to. The pusillanimity of his answer surprised me. He wrote to
the master of the parish to which the creature belonged, and
endeavored to stifle the matter. Perceiving this, I concerned myself
no more about it, but I was astonished that a man who could stoop so
low should have been sufficiently master of himself to deceive me by
his reserve in the closest familiarity.
  From Strasbourgh, Sauttersheim went to seek his fortune in Paris,
and found there nothing but misery. He wrote to me, acknowledging
his error. My compassion was excited by the recollection of our former
friendship, and I sent him a sum of money. The year following, as I
passed through Paris, I saw him much in the same situation; but he was
the intimate friend of M. de Laliaud, and I could not learn by what
means he had formed this acquaintance, or whether it was recent or
of long standing. Two years afterwards Sauttersheim returned to
Strasbourgh, whence he wrote to me and where he died. This, in a few
words, is the history of our connection, and what I know of his
adventures; but while I mourn the fate of the unhappy young man, I
still, and ever shall, believe he was the son of people of
distinction, and that the impropriety of his conduct was the effect of
the situations to which he was reduced.
  Such were the connections and acquaintance I acquired at Motiers.
How many of these would have been necessary to compensate the cruel
losses I suffered at the same time!
  The first of these was that of M. de Luxembourg, who, after having
been long tormented by the physicians, at length became their
victim, by being treated for the gout, which they would not
acknowledge him to have, as for a disorder they thought they could
cure.
  According to what La Roche, the confidential servant of Madam de
Luxembourg, wrote to me relative to what had happened, it is by this
cruel and memorable example that the miseries of greatness are to be
deplored.
  The loss of this good nobleman afflicted me the more, as he was
the only real friend I had in France, and the mildness of his
character was such as to make me quite forget his rank, and attach
myself to him as my equal. Our connection was not broken off on
account of my having quitted the kingdom; he continued to write to
me as usual.
  I nevertheless thought I perceived that absence, or my misfortune,
had cooled his affection for me. It is difficult to a courtier to
preserve the same attachment to a person whom he knows to be in
disgrace with courts. I moreover suspected the great ascendancy
Madam de Luxembourg had over his mind had been unfavorable to me,
and that she had taken advantage of our separation to injure me in his
esteem. For her part, notwithstanding a few affected marks of
regard, which daily became less frequent, she less concealed the
change in her friendship. She wrote to me four or five times into
Switzerland, after which she never wrote to me again, and nothing
but my prejudice, confidence, and blindness could have prevented my
discovering in her something more than a coolness towards me.
  Guy the bookseller, partner with Duchesne, who, after I had left
Montmorency, frequently went to the hotel de Luxembourg, wrote to me
that my name was in the will of the marechal. There was nothing in
this either incredible or extraordinary, on which account I had no
doubt of the truth of the information. I deliberated within myself
whether or not I should receive the legacy. Everything well
considered, I determined to accept it, whatever it might be, and to do
that honor to the memory of an honest man, who, in a rank in which
friendship is seldom found, had had a real one for me. I had not
this duty to fulfill. I heard no more of the legacy, whether it were
true or false; and in truth I should have felt some pain in
offending against one of the great maxims of my system of morality, in
profiting by anything at the death of a person whom I had once held
dear. During the last illness of our friend Mussard, Leneips
proposed to me to take advantage of the grateful sense he expressed
for our cares, to insinuate to him dispositions in our favor. "Ah!
my dear Leneips," said I, "let us not pollute by interested ideas
the sad but sacred duties we discharge towards our dying friend. I
hope my name will never be found in the testament of any person, at
least not in that of a friend." It was about this time that my lord
marshal spoke to me of his, of what he intended to do in it for me,
and that I made him the answer of which I have spoken in the first
part of my memoirs.
  My second loss, still more afflicting and irreparable, was that of
the best of women and mothers, who, already weighed down with years,
and overburthened with infirmities and misery, quitted this vale of
tears for the abode of the blessed, where the amiable remembrance of
the good we have done here below is the eternal reward of our
benevolence. Go, gentle and beneficient shade, to those of Fenelon,
Bernex, Catinat, and others, who in a more humble state have, like
them, opened their hearts to true charity; go and taste of the fruit
of your own benevolence, and prepare for your son the place he hopes
to fill by your side. Happy in your misfortunes that Heaven, in
putting to them a period, has spared you the cruel spectacle of his!
Fearing, lest I should fill her heart with sorrow by the recital of my
first disasters, I had not written to her since my arrival in
Switzerland; but I wrote to M. de Conzie, to inquire after her
situation, and it was from him I learned she had ceased to alleviate
the sufferings of the afflicted and that her own were at an end. I
myself shall not suffer long; but if I thought I should not see her
again in the life to come, my feeble imagination would less delight in
the idea of the perfect happiness which I there hope to enjoy.
  My third and last loss, for since that time I have not had a
friend to lose, was that of the lord marshal. He did not die, but
tired of serving the ungrateful, he left Neuchatel, and I have never
seen him since. He still lives, and will, I hope, survive me: he is
alive, and thanks to him, all my attachments on earth are not
destroyed. There is one man still worthy of my friendship; for the
real value of this consists more in what we feel than in that which we
inspire; but I have lost the pleasure I enjoyed in his, and can rank
him in the number of those only whom I love, but with whom I am no
longer connected. He went to England to receive the pardon of the
king, and acquired the possession of the property which formerly had
been confiscated. We did not separate without an intention of again
being united, the idea of which seemed to give him as much pleasure as
I received from it. He determined to reside at Keith Hall, near
Aberdeen, and I was to join him as soon as he was settled there: but
this project was too flattering to my hopes to give me any of its
success. He did not remain in Scotland. The affectionate solicitations
of the King of Prussia induced him to return to Berlin, and the reason
of my not going to him there will presently appear.
  Before this departure, foreseeing the storm which my enemies began
to raise against me, he of his own accord sent me letters of
naturalization, which seemed to be a certain means of preventing me
from being driven from the country. The community of the Convent of
Val de Travers followed the example of the governor, and gave me
letters of Communion, gratis, as they were the first. Thus, in every
respect, become a citizen, I was sheltered from legal expulsion,
even by the prince; but it has never been by legitimate means, that
the man who, of all others, has shown the greatest respect for the
laws, has been persecuted. I do not think I ought to enumerate,
amongst the number of my losses at this time, that of the Abbe
Mably. Having lived some time at the house of his mother, I have
been acquainted with the abbe, but not very intimately, and I have
reason to believe the nature of his sentiments with respect to me
changed after I required a greater celebrity than he already had.
But the first time I discovered his insincerity was immediately
after the publication of the Letters from the Mountain. A letter
attributed to him, addressed to Madam Saladin, was handed about in
Geneva, in which he spoke of this work as the seditious clamors of a
furious demagogue.
  The esteem I had for the Abbe Mably, and my great opinion of his
understanding, did not permit me to believe this extravagant letter
was written by him. I acted in this business with my usual candor. I
sent him a copy of the letter, informing him he was said to be the
author of it. He returned me no answer. This silence astonished me:
but what was my surprise when by a letter I received from Madam de
Chenonceaux, I learned the abbe was really the author of that which
was attributed to him, and found himself greatly embarrassed by
mine. For even supposing for a moment that what he stated was true,
how could he justify so public an attack, wantonly made, without
obligation or necessity, for the sole purpose of overwhelming, in
the midst of his greatest misfortunes, a man to whom he had shown
himself a well-wisher, and who had not done anything that could excite
his enmity? In a short time afterwards the Dialogues of Phocion, in
which I perceived nothing but a compilation, without shame or
restraint, from my writings, made their appearance.
  In reading this book I perceived the author had not the least regard
for me, and that in future I must number him among my most bitter
enemies. I do not believe he has ever pardoned me for the Social
Contract, far superior to his abilities, or the Perpetual Peace; and I
am, besides, of opinion that the desire he expressed that I should
make an extract from the Abbe de St. Pierre, proceeded from a
supposition in him that I should not acquit myself of it so well.
  The further I advanced in my narrative, the less order I feel myself
capable of observing. The agitation of the rest of my life has
deranged in my ideas the succession of events. These are too numerous,
confused, and disagreeable to be recited in due order. The only strong
impression they have left upon my mind is that of the horrid mystery
by which the cause of them is concealed, and of the deplorable state
to which they have reduced me. My narrative will in future be
irregular, and according to the events which, without order, may occur
to my recollection. I remember about the time to which I refer, full
of the idea of my confessions, I very imprudently spoke of them to
everybody, never imagining it could be the wish or interest, much less
within the power of any person whatsoever, to throw an obstacle in the
way of this undertaking, and had I suspected it, even this would not
have rendered me more discreet, as from the nature of my disposition
it is totally impossible for me to conceal either my thoughts or
feelings. The knowledge of this enterprise was, as far as I can judge,
the cause of the storm that was raised to drive me from Switzerland,
and deliver me into the hands of those by whom I might be prevented
from executing it.
  I had another project in contemplation which was not looked upon
with a more favorable eye by those who were afraid of the first:
this was a general edition of my works. I thought this edition of them
necessary to ascertain what books, amongst those to which my name
was affixed, were really written by me, and to furnish the public with
the means of distinguishing them from the writings falsely
attributed to me by my enemies, to bring me to dishonor and
contempt. This was besides a simple and an honorable means of insuring
to myself a livelihood, and the only one that remained to me. As I had
renounced the profession of an author, my memoirs not being of a
nature to appear during my lifetime; and as I no longer gained a
farthing in any manner whatsoever, and constantly lived at a certain
expense, I saw the end of my resources in that of the produce of the
last things I had written. This reason had induced me to hasten the
finishing of my Dictionary of Music, which still was incomplete. I had
received for it a hundred louis and a life annuity of three hundred
livres; but a hundred louis could not last long in the hands of a
man who annually expended upwards of sixty, and three hundred livres a
year was but a trifling sum to one upon whom parasites and beggarly
visitors lighted like a swarm of flies.
  A company of merchants from Neuchatel came to undertake the
general edition, and a printer or bookseller of the name of Reguillat,
from Lyons, thrust himself, I know not by what means, amongst them
to direct it. The agreement was made upon reasonable terms, and
sufficient to accomplish my object. I had in print and manuscript,
matter for six volumes in quarto. I moreover agreed to give my
assistance in bringing out the edition. The merchants were, on their
part, to pay me a thousand crowns down, and to assign me an annuity of
sixteen hundred livres for life.
  The agreement was concluded but not signed, when the Letters from
the Mountain appeared. The terrible explosion caused by this
infernal work, and its abominable author, terrified the company, and
the undertaking was at an end.
  I would compare the effect of this last production to that of the
letter on French Music, had not that letter, while it brought upon
me hatred, and exposed me to danger, acquired me respect and esteem.
But after the appearance of the last work, it was matter of
astonishment at Geneva and Versailles, that such a monster as the
author of it should be suffered to exist. The little council,
excited by Resident de France, and directed by the attorney-general,
made a declaration against my work, by which, in the most severe
terms, it was declared to be unworthy of being burned by the hands
of the hangman, adding, with an address which bordered upon the
burlesque, there was no possibility of speaking of or answering it
without dishonor. I would here transcribe the curious piece of
composition, but unfortunately I have it not by me. I ardently wish
some of my readers, animated by the zeal of truth and equity, would
read over the Letters from the Mountain: they will, I dare hope,
feel the stoical moderation which reigns throughout the whole, after
all the cruel outrages with which the author was loaded. But unable to
answer the abuse, because no part of it could be called by that
name, nor to the reasons because these were unanswerable, my enemies
pretended to appear too much enraged to reply: and it is true, if they
took the invincible arguments it contains for abuse, they must have
felt themselves roughly treated.
  The remonstrating party, far from complaining of the odious
declaration, acted according to the spirit of it, and instead of
making a trophy of the Letters from the Mountain, which they veiled to
make them serve as a shield, were pusillanimous enough not to do
justice or honor to that work, written to defend them, and at their
own solicitation. They did not either quote or mention the letters,
although they tacitly drew from them all their arguments, and by
exactly following the advice with which they conclude, made them the
sole cause of their safety and triumph. They had imposed on me this
duty: I had fulfilled it, and unto the end had served their cause
and the country. I begged of them to abandon me, and in their quarrels
to think of nobody but themselves. They took me at my word, and I
concerned myself no more about their affairs, further than
constantly to exhort them to peace, not doubting, should they continue
to be obstinate, of their being crushed by France; this however did
not happen; I know the reason why it did not, but this is not the
place to explain what I mean.
  The effect produced at Neuchatel by the Letters from the Mountain
was at first very mild. I sent a copy of them to M. de Montmollin, who
received it favorably, and read it without making any objection. He
was ill as well as myself; as soon as he recovered he came in a
friendly manner to see me, and conversed on general subjects. A
rumor was however begun: the book was burned I know not where. From
Geneva, Berne, and perhaps from Versailles, the effervescence
quickly passed to Neuchatel, and especially to Val de Travers,
where, before even the ministers had taken any apparent steps, an
attempt was secretly made to stir up the people. I ought, I dare
assert, to have been beloved by the people of that country in which
I have lived, giving alms in abundance, not leaving about me an
indigent person without assistance, never refusing to do any service
in my power, and which was consistent with justice, making myself
perhaps too familiar with everybody, and avoiding, as far as it was
possible for me to do it, all distinction which might excite the least
jealousy. This, however, did not prevent the populace, secretly
stirred up against me by I know not whom, from being by degrees
irritated against me, even to fury, nor from publicly insulting me,
not only in the country and upon the road, but in the street. Those to
whom I had rendered the greatest services became most irritated
against me, and even people who still continued to receive my
benefactions, not daring to appear, excited others, and seemed to wish
thus to be revenged of me for their humiliation, by the obligations
they were under for the favors I had conferred upon them. Montmollin
seemed to pay no attention to what was passing, and did not yet come
forward. But as the time of communion approached, he came to advise me
not to present myself at the holy table, assuring me, however, he
was not my enemy, and that he would leave me undisturbed. I found this
compliment whimsical enough; it brought to my recollection the
letter from Madam de Boufflers, and I could not conceive to whom it
could be a matter of such importance whether I communicated or not.
Considering this condescension on my part as an act of cowardice,
and moreover, being unwilling to give to the people a new pretense
under which they might charge me with impiety, I refused the request
of the minister, and he went away dissatisfied, giving me to
understand I should repent of my obstinacy.
  He could not of his own authority forbid me the communion: that of
the Consistory, by which I had been admitted to it, was necessary, and
as long as there was no objection from that body I might present
myself without the fear of being refused. Montmollin procured from the
Classe (the ministers) a commission to summon me to the Consistory,
there to give an account of the articles of my faith, and to
excommunicate me should I refuse to comply. This excommunication could
not be pronounced without the aid of the Consistory also, and a
majority of the voices. But the peasants, who under the appellation of
elders, composed this assembly, presided over and governed by their
minister, might naturally be expected to adopt his opinion, especially
in matters of the clergy, which they still less understood than he
did. I was therefore summoned, and I resolved to appear.
  What a happy circumstance and triumph would this have been to me
could I have spoken, and had I, if I may so speak, had my pen in my
mouth! With what superiority, with what facility even, should I have
overthrown this poor minister in the midst of his six peasants! The
thirst after power having made the Protestant clergy forget all the
principles of the reformation, all I had to do to recall these to
their recollection and reduce them to silence, was to make comments
upon my first Letters from the Mountain, upon which they had the folly
to animadvert.
  My text was ready, and I had only to enlarge on it, and my adversary
was confounded. I should not have been weak enough to remain on the
defensive; it was easy to me to become an assailant without his even
perceiving it, or being able to shelter himself from my attack. The
contemptible priests of the Classe, equally careless and ignorant, had
of themselves placed me in the most favorable situation I could desire
to crush them at pleasure. But what of this? It was necessary I should
speak without hesitation, and find ideas, turn of expression, and
words at will, preserving a presence of mind, and keeping myself
collected, without once suffering even a momentary confusion. For what
could I hope, feeling, as I did, my want of aptitude to express myself
with ease? I had been reduced to the most mortifying silence at
Geneva, before an assembly which was favorable to me, and previously
resolved to approve of everything I should say. Here, on the contrary,
I had to do with a caviller who, substituting cunning to knowledge,
would spread for me a hundred snares before I could perceive one of
them, and was resolutely determined to catch me in an error let the
consequence be what it would. The more I examined the situation in
which I stood, the greater danger I perceived myself exposed to, and
feeling the impossibility of successfully withdrawing from it, I
thought of another expedient. I meditated a discourse which I intended
to pronounce before the Consistory, to exempt myself from the
necessity of answering. The thing was easy. I wrote the discourse
and began to learn it by memory, with an inconceivable ardor.
Theresa laughed at hearing me mutter and incessantly repeat the same
phrases, while endeavoring to cram them into my head. I hoped, at
length, to remember what I had written: I knew the chatelain, as an
officer attached to the service of the prince, would be present at the
Consistory, and that notwithstanding the maneuvers and bottles of
Montmollin, most of the elders were well disposed towards me. I had,
moreover, in my favor, reason, truth, and justice, with the protection
of the king, the authority of the council of state, and the good
wishes of every real patriot, to whom the establishment of this
inquisition was threatening. In fine, everything contributed to
encourage me.
  On the eve of the day appointed, I had my discourse by rote, and
recited it without missing a word. I had it in my head all night: in
the morning I had forgotten it. I hesitated at every word, thought
myself before the assembly, became confused, stammered, and lost my
presence of mind. In fine, when the time to make my appearance was
almost at hand, my courage totally failed me. I remained at home and
wrote to the Consistory, hastily stating my reasons, and pleaded my
disorder, which really, in the state to which apprehension had reduced
me, would scarcely have permitted me to stay out the whole sitting.
  The minister, embarrassed by my letter, adjourned the Consistory. In
the interval, he, of himself, and by his creatures, made a thousand
efforts to seduce the elders, who, following the dictates of their
consciences, rather than those they received from him, did not vote
according to his wishes, or those of the class. Whatever power his
arguments drawn from his cellar might have over these kind of
people, he could not gain one of them, more than the two or three
who were already devoted to his will, and who were called his ames
damnees.* The officer of the prince, and the Colonel Pury, who, in
this affair, acted with great zeal, kept the rest to their duty, and
when Montmollin wished to proceed to excommunication, his
Consistory, by a majority of voices, flatly refused to authorize him
to do it. Thus reduced to the last expedient, that of stirring up
the people against me, he, his colleagues, and other persons, set
about it openly, and were so successful, that notwithstanding the
strong and frequent rescripts of the king, and the orders of the
council of state, I was at length obliged to quit the country, that
I might not expose the officer of the king to be himself
assassinated while he protected me.

  * Damned Souls.

  The recollection of the whole of this affair is so confused, that it
is impossible for me to reduce to or conned the circumstances of it. I
remember a kind of negotiation had been entered into with the class,
in which Montmollin was the mediator. He feigned to believe it was
feared I should, by my writings, disturb the peace of the country,
in which case, the liberty I had of writing would be blamed. He had
given me to understand that if I consented to lay down my pen, what
was past would be forgotten. I had already entered into this
engagement with myself, and did not hesitate in doing it with the
class, but conditionally and solely in matters of religion. He found
means to have a duplicate of the agreement upon some change
necessary to be made in it, the condition having been rejected by
the class; I demanded back the writing, which was returned to me,
but he kept the duplicate, pretending it was lost. After this, the
people, openly excited by the ministers, laughed at the rescripts of
the king, and the orders of the council of state, and shook off all
restraint. I was declaimed against from the pulpit, called antichrist,
and pursued in the country like a mad wolf. My Armenian dress
discovered me to the populace; of this I felt the cruel inconvenience,
but to quit it in such circumstances, appeared to me an act of
cowardice. I could not prevail upon myself to do it, and I quietly
walked through the country with my caffetan and fur bonnet in the
midst of the hootings of the dregs of the people, and sometimes
through a shower of stones. Several times as I passed before houses, I
heard those by whom they were inhabited call out: "Bring me my gun,
that I may fire at him." As I did not on this account hasten my
pace, my calmness increased their fury, but they never went further
than threats, at least with respect to fire-arms.
  During this fermentation I received from two circumstances the
most sensible pleasure. The first was my having it in my power to
prove my gratitude by means of the lord marshal. The honest part of
the inhabitants of Neuchatel, full of indignation at the treatment I
received, and the maneuvers of which I was the victim, held the
ministers in execration, clearly perceiving they were obedient to a
foreign impulse, and the vile agents of people, who, in making them
act, kept themselves concealed; they were moreover afraid my case
would have dangerous consequences, and be made a precedent for the
purpose of establishing a real inquisition.
  The magistrates, and especially M. Meuron, who had succeeded M.
d'Ivernois in the office of attorney-general, made every effort to
defend me. Colonel Pury, although a private individual, did more,
and succeeded better. It was the colonel who found means to make
Montmollin submit in his Consistory, by keeping the elders to their
duty. He had credit, and employed it to stop the sedition; but he
had nothing more than the authority of the laws, and the aid of
justice and reason, to oppose to that of money and wine: the combat
was unequal, and in this point Montmollin was triumphant. However,
thankful for his zeal and cares, I wished to have it in my power to
make him a return of good offices, and in some measure discharge a
part of the obligations I was under to him. I knew he was very
desirous of being named a counselor of state; but having displeased
the court by his conduct in the affair of the minister Petitpierre, he
was in disgrace with the prince and governor. I however undertook,
at all risks, to write to the lord marshal in his favor: I went so far
as even to mention the employment of which he was desirous, and my
application was so well received that, contrary to the expectations of
his most ardent well wishers, it was almost instantly conferred upon
him by the king. In this manner fate, which has constantly raised me
to too great an elevation, or plunged me into an abyss of adversity,
continued to toss me from one extreme to another, and whilst the
populace covered me with mud I was able to make a counselor of state.
  The other pleasing circumstance was a visit I received from Madam de
Verdelin with her daughter, with whom she had been at the baths of
Bourbonne, whence they came to Motiers and stayed with me two or three
days. By her attention and cares, she at length conquered my long
repugnancy; and my heart, won by her endearing manner, made her a
return of all the friendship of which she had long given me proofs.
This journey made me extremely sensible of her kindness: my
situation rendered the consolations of friendship highly necessary
to support me under my sufferings. I was afraid she would be too
much affected by the insults I received from the populace, and could
have wished to conceal them from her that her feelings might not be
hurt, but this was impossible; and although her presence was some
check upon the insolent populace in our walks, she saw enough of their
brutality to enable her to judge of what passed when I was alone.
During the short residence she made at Motiers, I was still attacked
in my habitation. One morning her chambermaid found my window
blocked up with stones, which had been thrown at it during the
night. A very heavy bench placed in the street by the side of the
house, and strongly fastened down, was taken up and reared against the
door in such a manner as, had it not been perceived from the window,
to have knocked down the first person who should have opened the
door to go out. Madam de Verdelin was acquainted with everything
that passed; for, besides what she herself was witness to, her
confidential servant went into many houses in the village, spoke to
everybody, and was seen in conversation with Montmollin. She did
not, however, seem to pay the least attention to that which happened
to me, nor never mentioned Montmollin nor any other person, and
answered in a few words to what I said to her of him. Persuaded that a
residence in England would be more agreeable to me than any other, she
frequently spoke of Mr. Hume, who was then at Paris, of his friendship
for me, and the desire he had of being of service to me in his own
country. It is time I should say something of Hume.
  He had acquired a great reputation in France amongst the
Encyclopedists by his essays on commerce and politics, and in the last
place by his history of the House of Stuart, the only one of his
writings of which I had read a part, in the translation of the Abbe
Prevot. For want of being acquainted with his other works, I was
persuaded, according to what I heard of him, that Mr. Hume joined a
very republican mind to the English paradoxes in favor of luxury. In
this opinion I considered his whole apology of Charles I. as a prodigy
of impartiality, and I had as great an idea of his virtue as of his
genius. The desire of being acquainted with this great man, and of
obtaining his friendship, had greatly strengthened the inclination I
felt to go to England, induced by the solicitations of Madam de
Boufflers, the intimate friend of Hume. After my arrival in
Switzerland, I received from him, by means of this lady, a letter
extremely flattering; in which, to the highest encomiums on my genius,
he subjoined a pressing invitation to induce me to go to England,
and the offer of all his interest, and that of his friends, to make my
residence there agreeable. I found in the country to which I had
retired, the lord marshal, the countryman and friend of Hume, who
confirmed my good opinion of him, and from whom I learned a literary
anecdote, which did him great honor in the opinion of his lordship and
had the same effect in mine. Wallace, who had written against Hume
upon the subject of the population of the ancients, was absent
whilst his work was in the press. Hume took upon himself to examine
the proofs, and to do the needful to the edition. This manner of
acting was according to my own way of thinking. I had sold at six sols
(three pence) a piece, the copies of a song written against myself.
I was, therefore, strongly prejudiced in favor of Hume, when Madam
de Verdelin came and mentioned the lively friendship he expressed
for me, and his anxiety to do me the honors of England; such was her
expression, She pressed me a good deal to take advantage of this
zeal and to write to him. As I had not naturally an inclination to
England, and did not intend to go there until the last extremity, I
refused to write or make any promise; but I left her at liberty to
do whatever she should think necessary to keep Mr. Hume favorably
disposed towards me. When she went from Motiers, she left me in the
persuasion, by everything she had said to me of that illustrious
man, that he was my friend, and she herself still more his.
  After her departure, Montmollin carried on his maneuvers with more
vigor, and the populace threw off all restraint. Yet I still continued
to walk quietly amidst the hootings of the vulgar; and a taste for
botany, which I had begun to contract with Doctor d'Ivernois, making
my rambling more amusing, I went through the country herbalizing,
without being affected by the clamors of this scum of the earth, whose
fury was still augmented by my calmness. What affected me most was,
seeing families of my friends,* or of persons who gave themselves that
name, openly join the league of my persecutors; such as the
D'Ivernois, without excepting the father and brother of my Isabelle
Boy de la Tour, a relation to the friend in whose house I lodged,
and Madam Girardier, her sister-in-law. This Peter Boy was such a
brute; so stupid, and behaved so uncouthly, that, to prevent my mind
from being disturbed, I took the liberty to ridicule him; and, after
the manner of the Petit Prophete, I wrote a pamphlet of a few pages,
entitled, la Vision de Pierre de la Montagne dit let Voyant,*(2) in
which I found means to be diverting enough on the miracles which
then served as the great pretext for my persecution. Du Peyrou had
this scrap printed at Geneva, but its success in the country was but
moderate; the Neuchatelois, with all their wit, taste but weakly attic
salt or pleasantry when these are a little refined.

  * This fatality had begun with my residence at Yverdon: the banneret
Roguin dying a year or two after my departure from that city, the
old papa Roguin had the candor to inform me with grief, as he said,
that in the papers of his relation, proofs had been found of his
having been concerned in the conspiracy to expel me from Yverdon and
the state of Berne. This clearly proved the conspiracy not to be, as
some persons pretended to believe, an affair of hypocrisy; since the
banneret, far from being a devotee, carried materialism and
incredulity to intolerance and fanaticism. Besides, nobody at
Yverdon had shown me more constant attention, nor had so prodigally
bestowed upon me praises and flattery as this banneret. He
faithfully followed the favorite plan of my persecutors.
  *(2) The vision of Peter of the Mountain, called the Seer.

  In the midst of decrees and persecutions, the Genevese had
distinguished themselves by setting up a hue and cry with all their
might; and my friend Vernes amongst others, with an heroical
generosity, chose that moment precisely, to publish against me letters
in which he pretended to prove I was not a Christian. These letters,
written with an air of self-sufficiency, were not the better for it,
although it was positively said the celebrated Bonnet had given them
some correction: for this man, although a materialist, has an
intolerant orthodoxy the moment I am in question. There certainly
was nothing in this work which could tempt me to answer it; but having
an opportunity of saying a few words upon it in my Letters from the
Mountain, I inserted in them a short note sufficiently expressive of
disdain to render Vernes furious. He filled Geneva with his furious
exclamations, and D'Ivernois wrote me word he had quite lost his
senses. Sometime afterwards appeared an anonymous sheet, which instead
of ink seemed to be written with the water of Phelethon. In this
letter I was accused of having exposed my children in the streets,
of taking about with me a soldier's trull, of being worn out with
debaucheries, and other fine things of a like nature. It was not
difficult for me to discover the author. My first idea on reading this
libel, was to reduce to its real value everything the world calls fame
and reputation amongst men; seeing thus a man who was never in a
brothel in his life, and whose greatest defect was his being as
timid and shy as a virgin, treated as a frequenter of places of that
description; and in finding myself charged with being eaten up by
the pox. I, who not only never had the least taint of any venereal
disease, but, according to the faculty, was so constructed as to
make it almost impossible for me to contract it. Everything well
considered, I thought I could not better refute this libel than by
having it printed in the city in which I longest resided, and with
this intention I sent it to Duchesne to print it as it was with an
advertisement, in which I named M. Vernes and a few short notes by way
of eclaircissement. Not satisfied with printing it only, I sent copies
to several persons, and amongst others one copy to the Prince Louis of
Wirtemberg, who had made me polite advances, and with whom I was in
correspondence. The prince, Du Peyrou, and others, seemed to have
their doubts about the author of the libel, and blamed me for having
named Vernes upon so slight a foundation. Their remarks produced in me
some scruples, and I wrote to Duchesne to suppress the paper. Guy
wrote to me he had suppressed it: this may or may not be the case; I
have been deceived on so many occasions that there would be nothing
extraordinary in my being so on this, and, from the time of which I
speak, was so enveloped in profound darkness that it was impossible
for me to come at any kind of truth.
  M. Vernes bore the imputation with a moderation more than
astonishing in a man who was supposed not to have deserved it, and
after the fury with which he was seized on former occasions. He
wrote me two or three letters in very guarded terms with a view, as it
appeared to me, to endeavor by my answers to discover how far I was
certain of his being the author of the paper, and whether or not I had
any proofs against him. I wrote him two short answers, severe in the
sense, but politely expressed, and with which he was not displeased.
To this third letter, perceiving he wished to form with me a kind of
correspondence, I returned no answer, and he got D'Ivernois to speak
to me. Madam Cramer wrote to Du Peyrou, telling him she was certain
the libel was not by Vernes. This however did not make me change my
opinion. But as it was possible I might be deceived, and as it is
certain that if I were, I owed Vernes an explicit reparation, I sent
him word by D'Ivernois that I would make him such a one as he should
think proper, provided he would name to me the real author of the
libel, or at least prove that he himself was not so. I went further:
feeling that, after all, were he not culpable, I had no right to
call upon him for proofs of any kind, I stated, in a memoir of
considerable length, the reasons whence I had inferred my
conclusion, and determined to submit them to the judgment of an
arbitrator, against whom Vernes could not except. But few people would
guess the arbitrator of whom I made choice. I declared at the end of
the memoir, that if, after having examined it, and made such inquiries
as should seem necessary, the council pronounced M. Vernes not to be
the author of the libel, from that moment I should be fully
persuaded he was not, and would immediately go and throw myself at his
feet, and ask his pardon until I had obtained it. I can say with the
greatest truth that my ardent zeal for equity, the uprightness and
generosity of my heart, and my confidence in the love of justice
innate in every mind, never appeared more fully and perceptible than
in this wise and interesting memoir, in which I took, without
hesitating, my most implacable enemies for arbitrators between a
calumniator and myself. I read to Du Peyrou what I had written: he
advised me to suppress it, and I did so. He wished me to wait for
the proofs Vernes promised, and I am still waiting for them; he
thought it best I should in the meantime be silent, and I held my
tongue, and shall do so the rest of my life, censured as I am for
having brought against Vernes a heavy imputation, false and
unsupported by proof, although I am still fully persuaded, nay, as
convinced as I am of my existence, that he is the author of the libel.
My memoir is in the hands of Du Peyrou. Should it ever be published my
reasons will be found in it, and the heart of Jean-Jacques, with which
my contemporaries would not be acquainted, will I hope be known.
  I have now to proceed to my catastrophe at Motiers, and to my
departure from Val de Travers, after a residence of two years and a
half, and an eight months suffering with unshaken constancy of the
most unworthy treatment. It is impossible for me clearly to
recollect the circumstances of this disagreeable period, but a
detail of them will be found in a publication to that effect by Du
Peyrou, of which I shall hereafter have occasion to speak.
  After the departure of Madam de Verdelin the fermentation increased,
and, notwithstanding the reiterated rescripts of the king, the
frequent orders of the council of state, and the cares of the
chatelain and magistrates of the place, the people, seriously
considering me as antichrist, and perceiving all their clamors to be
of no effect, seemed at length determined to proceed to violence;
stones were already thrown after me in the roads, but I was however in
general at too great a distance to receive any harm from them. At
last, in the night of the fair of Motiers, which is in the beginning
of September, I was attacked in my habitation in such a manner as to
endanger the lives of everybody in the house.
  At midnight I heard a great noise in the gallery which ran along the
back part of the house. A shower of stones thrown against the window
and the door which opened to the gallery fell into it with so much
noise and violence, that my dog, which usually slept there, and had
begun to bark, ceased from fright, and ran into a corner gnawing and
scratching the planks to endeavor to make his escape. I immediately
rose, and was preparing to go from my chamber into the kitchen, when a
stone thrown by a vigorous arm crossed the latter, after having broken
the window, forced open the door of my chamber, and fell at my feet,
so that had I been a moment sooner upon the floor I should have had
the stone against my stomach. I judged the noise had been made to
bring me to the door, and the stone thrown to receive me as I went
out. I ran into the kitchen, where I found Theresa, who also had
risen, and was tremblingly making her way to me as fast as she
could. We placed ourselves against the wall out of the direction of
the window to avoid the stones, and deliberated upon what was best
to be done; for going out to call assistance was the certain means
of getting ourselves knocked on the head. Fortunately the maid-servant
of an old man who lodged under me was waked by the noise, and got up
and ran to call the chatelain, whose house was next to mine. He jumped
from his bed, put on his robe de chambre, and instantly came to me
with the guard, which, on account of the fair, went the round that
night, and was just at hand. The chatelain was so alarmed at the sight
of the effects of what had happened that he turned pale, and on seeing
the stones in the gallery, exclaimed, "Good God! it is a regular
quarry!" On examining below stairs, the door of a little court was
found to have been forced, and there was an appearance of an attempt
having been made to get into the house by the gallery. On inquiring
the reason why the guard had neither prevented nor perceived the
disturbance, it came out that the guards of Motiers had insisted
upon doing duty that night, although it was the turn of those of
another village.
  The next day the chatelain sent his report to the council of
state, which two days afterwards sent an order to inquire into the
affair, to promise a reward and secrecy to those who should impeach
such as were guilty, and in the meantime to place, at the expense of
the king, guards about my house, and that of the chatelain, which
joined to it. The day after the disturbance, Colonel Pury, the
Attorney-General Meuron, the Chatelain Martinet, the Receiver Guyenet,
the Treasurer d'Ivernois and his father, in a word, every person of
consequence in the country, came to see me, and united their
solicitations to persuade me to yield to the storm, and leave, at
least for a time, a place in which I could no longer live in safety
nor with honor. I perceived that even the chatelain was frightened
at the fury of the people, and apprehending it might extend to
himself, would be glad to see me depart as soon as possible, that he
might no longer have the trouble of protecting me there, and be able
to quit the parish, which he did after my departure. I therefore
yielded to their solicitations, and this with but little pain, for the
hatred of the people so afflicted my heart that I was no longer able
to support it.
  I had a choice of places to retire to. After Madam de Verdelin
returned to Paris, she had, in several letters, mentioned a Mr.
Walpole, whom she called my lord, who, having a strong desire to serve
me, proposed to me an asylum at one of his country houses, of the
situation of which she gave me the most agreeable description;
entering, relative to lodging and subsistence, into a detail which
proved she and Lord Walpole had held particular consultations upon the
project. My lord marshal had always advised me to go to England or
Scotland, and in case of my determining upon the latter, offered me
there an asylum. But he offered me another at Potsdam, near to his
person, and which tempted me more than all the rest. He had just
communicated to me what the king had said to him upon my going
there, which was a kind of invitation to me from that monarch, and the
Duchess of Saxe-Gotha depended so much upon my taking the journey that
she wrote to me, desiring I would go to see her in my way to the court
of Prussia, and stay some time before I proceeded farther; but I was
so attached to Switzerland that I could not resolve to quit it so long
as it was possible for me to live there, and I seized this opportunity
to execute a project of which I had for several months conceived the
idea, and of which I have deferred speaking, that I might not
interrupt my narrative.
  This project consisted in going to reside in the island of St.
Pierre, an estate belonging to the Hospital of Berne, in the middle of
the lake of Bienne. In a pedestrian pilgrimage I had made the
preceding year with Du Peyrou we had visited this isle, with which I
was so much delighted that I had since that time incessantly thought
of the means of making it my place of residence. The greatest obstacle
to my wishes arose from the property of the island being vested in the
people of Berne, who three years before had driven me from amongst
them; and besides the mortification of returning to live with people
who had given me so unfavorable a reception, I had reason to fear they
would leave me no more peace in the island than they had done at
Yverdon. I had consulted the lord marshal upon the subject, who
thinking as I did, that the people of Berne would be glad to see me
banished to the island, and to keep me there as a hostage for the
works I might be tempted to write, had founded their dispositions by
means of M. Sturler, his old neighbor at Colombier. M. Sturler
addressed himself to the chiefs of the state, and, according to
their answer, assured the marshal the Bernois, sorry for their past
behavior, wished to see me settled in the island of St. Pierre, and to
leave me there at peace. As an additional precaution, before I
determined to reside there, I desired the Colonel Chaillet to make new
inquiries. He confirmed what I had already heard, and the receiver
of the island having obtained from his superiors permission to lodge
me in it, I thought I might without danger go to the house, with the
tacit consent of the sovereign and the proprietors; for I could not
expect the people of Berne would openly acknowledge the injustice they
had done me, and thus act contrary to the most inviolable maxim of all
sovereigns.
  The island of St. Pierre, called at Neuchatel the island of La
Motte, in the middle of the lake of Bienne, is half a league in
circumference; but in this little space all the chief productions
necessary to subsistence are found. The island has fields, meadows,
orchards, woods, and vineyards, and all these, favored by variegated
and mountainous situations, form a distribution of the more agreeable,
as the parts, not being discovered all at once, are seen
successively to advantage, and make the island appear greater than
it really is. A very elevated terrace forms the western part of it,
and commands Gleresse and Neuveville. This terrace is planted with
trees which form a long alley, interrupted in the middle by a great
saloon, in which, during the vintage, the people from the
neighboring shores assemble and divert themselves. There is but one
house in the whole island, but that is very spacious and convenient,
inhabited by the receiver, and situated in a hollow by which it is
sheltered from the winds.
  Five or six hundred paces to the south of the island of St. Pierre
is another island, considerably less than the former, wild and
uncultivated, which appears to have been detached from the greater
isle by storms: its gravelly soil produces nothing but willows and
persicaria, but there is in it a high hill well covered with
greensward and very pleasant. The form of the lake is an almost
regular oval. The banks, less rich than A those of the lake of
Geneva and Neuchatel, form a beautiful decoration, especially
towards the western part, which is well peopled, and edged with
vineyards at the foot of a chain of mountains, something like those of
Cote-Rotie, but which produce not such excellent wine. The bailiwick
of St. Jean, Neuveville, Berne, and Bienne, lie in a line from the
south to the north, to the extremity of the lake, the whole
interspersed with very agreeable villages.
  Such was the asylum I had prepared for myself, and to which I was
determined to retire after quitting Val de Travers.* This choice was
so agreeable to my peaceful inclinations, and my solitary and indolent
disposition, that I consider it as one of the pleasing reveries, of
which I became the most passionately fond. I thought I should in
that island be more separated from men, more sheltered from their
outrages, and sooner forgotten by mankind: in a word, more abandoned
to the delightful pleasures of the inaction of a contemplative life. I
could have wished to have been confined in it in such a manner as to
have had no intercourse with mortals, and I certainly took every
measure I could imagine to relieve me from the necessity of
troubling my head about them.

  * It may perhaps be necessary to remark that I left there an enemy
in M. du Teneaux, mayor of Verrieres, not much esteemed in the
country, but who has a brother, said to be an honest man, in the
office of M. de St. Florentin. The mayor had been to see him
sometime before my adventure. Little remarks of this kind, though of
no consequence in themselves, may lead to the discovery of many
underhand dealings.

  The great question was that of subsistence, and by the dearness of
provisions, and the difficulty of carriage, this is expensive in the
island; the inhabitants are besides at the mercy of the receiver. This
difficulty was removed by an arrangement which Du Peyrou made with me,
in becoming a substitute to the company which had undertaken and
abandoned my general edition. I gave him all the materials
necessary, and made the proper arrangement and distribution. To the
engagement between us I added that of giving him the memoirs of my
life, and made him the general depositary of all my papers, under
the express condition of making no use of them until after my death,
having it at heart quietly to end my days without doing anything which
should again bring me back to the recollection of the public. The life
annuity he undertook to pay me was sufficient to my subsistence. My
lord marshal having recovered all his property, had offered me
twelve hundred livres a year, half of which I accepted. He wished to
send me the principal, but this I refused on account of the difficulty
of placing it. He then sent the amount to Du Peyrou, in whose hands it
remained, and who pays me the annuity according to the terms agreed
upon with his lordship. Adding therefore to the result of my agreement
with Du Peyrou, the annuity of the marshal, two-thirds of which were
reversible to Theresa after my death, and the annuity of three hundred
livres from Duchesne, I was assured of a genteel subsistence for
myself, and after me for Theresa, to whom I left seven hundred
livres a year, from the annuities paid me by Rey and the lord marshal;
I had therefore no longer to fear a want of bread. But it was ordained
that honor should oblige me to reject all these resources which
fortune and my labors placed within my reach, and that I should die as
poor as I had lived. It will be seen whether or not, without
reducing myself to the last degree of infamy, I could abide by the
engagements which care has always been taken to render ignominious, by
depriving me of every other resource to force me to consent to my
own dishonor. How was it possible anybody could doubt of the choice
I should make in such an alternative? Others have judged of my heart
by their own.
  My mind at ease relative to subsistence was without care upon
every other subject. Although I left in the world the field open to my
enemies, there remained in the noble enthusiasm by which my writings
were dictated, and in the constant uniformity of my principles, an
evidence of the uprightness of my heart, which answered to that
deducible from my conduct in favor of my natural disposition. I had no
need of any other defense against my calumniators. They might under my
name describe another man, but it was impossible they should deceive
such as were unwilling to be imposed upon. I could have given them
my whole life to animadvert upon, with a certainty, notwithstanding
all my faults and weaknesses, and my want of aptitude to support the
lightest yoke, of their finding me in every situation a just and
good man, without bitterness, hatred, or jealousy, ready to
acknowledge my errors, and still more prompt to forget the injuries
I received from others; seeking all my happiness in love,
friendship, and affection, and in everything carrying my sincerity
even to imprudence and the most incredible disinterestedness.
  I therefore in some measure took leave of the age in which I lived
and my contemporaries, and bade adieu to the world, with an
intention to confine myself for the rest of my days to that island;
such was my resolution, and it was there I hoped to execute the
great project of the indolent life to which I had until then
consecrated the little activity with which Heaven had endowed me.
The island was to become to me that of Papimanie, that happy country
where the inhabitants sleep

         Ou l'on fait plus, ou l'on fait nulle chose.*

  * Where they do more: where they do nothing.

  This more was everything for me, for I never much regretted sleep;
indolence is sufficient to my happiness, and provided I do nothing,
I had rather dream waking than asleep. Being past the age of
romantic projects, and having been more stunned than flattered by
the trumpet of fame, my only hope was that of living at ease, and
constantly at leisure. This is the life of the blessed in the world to
come, and for the rest of mine here below I made it my supreme
happiness.
  They who reproach me with so many contradictions will not fail
here to add another to the number. I have observed the indolence of
great companies made them unsupportable to me, and I am now seeking
solitude for the sole purpose of abandoning myself to inaction. This
however is my disposition; if there be in it a contradiction, it
proceeds from nature and not from me; but there is so little that it
is precisely on that account that I am always consistent. The
indolence of company is burdensome because it is forced. That of
solitude is charming because it is free, and depends upon the will. In
company I suffer cruelly by inaction, because this is of necessity.
I must there remain nailed to my chair, or stand upright like a
picket, without stirring hand or foot, not daring to run, jump,
sing, exclaim, nor gesticulate when I please, not allowed even to
dream, suffering at the same time the fatigue of inaction and all
the torment of constraint; obliged to pay attention to every foolish
thin uttered, and to all the idle compliments paid, and constantly
to keep my mind upon the rack that I may not fail to introduce in my
turn my jest or my lie. And this is called idleness! It is the labor
of a galley slave.
  The indolence I love is not that of a lazy fellow who sits with
his arms across in total inaction, and thinks no more than he acts,
but that of a child which is incessantly in motion doing nothing,
and that of a dotard who wanders from his subject. I love to amuse
myself with trifles, by beginning a hundred things and never finishing
one of them, by going and coming as I take either into my head, by
changing my project at every instant, by following a fly through all
its windings, in wishing to overturn a rock to see what is under it,
by undertaking with ardor the work of ten years, and abandoning it
without regret at the end of ten minutes; finally, in musing from
morning until night without order or coherence, and in following in
everything the caprice of a moment.
  Botany, such as I have always considered it, and of which after my
own manner I began to become passionately fond, was precisely an
idle study, proper to fill up the void of my leisure, without
leaving room for the delirium of imagination or the weariness of total
inaction. Carelessly wandering in the woods and the country,
mechanically gathering here a flower and there a branch; eating my
morsel almost by chance, observing a thousand and a thousand times the
same things, and always with the same interest, because I always
forgot them, were to me the means of passing an eternity without a
weary moment. However elegant, admirable, and variegated the structure
of plants may be, it does not strike an ignorant eye sufficiently to
fix the attention. The constant analogy, with, at the same time, the
prodigious variety which reigns in their conformation, gives
pleasure to those only who have already some idea of the vegetable
system. Others at the sight of these treasures of nature feel
nothing more than a stupid and monotonous admiration. They see nothing
in detail because they know not for what to look, nor do they perceive
the whole, having no idea of the chain of connection and
combinations which overwhelms with its wonders the mind of the
observer. I was arrived at that happy point of knowledge, and my
want of memory was such as constantly to keep me there, that I knew
little enough to make the whole new to me, and yet everything that was
necessary to make me sensible of the beauties of all the parts. The
different soils into which the island, although little, was divided,
offered a sufficient variety of plants, for the study and amusement of
my whole life. I was determined not to leave a blade of grass
without analyzing it, and I began already to take measures for making,
with an immense collection of observations, the Flora Petrinsularis.
  I sent for Theresa, who brought with her my books and effects. We
boarded with the receiver of the island. His wife had sisters at
Nidau, who by turns came to see her, and were company for Theresa. I
here made the experiment of the agreeable life which I could have
wished to continue to the end of my days, and the pleasure I found
in it only served to make me feel to a greater degree the bitterness
of that by which it was shortly to be succeeded.
  I have ever been passionately fond of water, and the sight of it
throws me into a delightful reverie, although frequently without a
determinate object.
  Immediately after I rose from my bed I never failed, if the
weather was fine, to run to the terrace to respire the fresh and
salubrious air of the morning, and glide my eye over the horizon of
the lake, bounded by banks and mountains, delightful to the view. I
know no homage more worthy of the divinity than the silent
admiration excited by the contemplation of His works, and which is not
externally expressed. I can easily comprehend the reason why the
inhabitants of great cities, who see nothing but walls, and streets,
have but little faith; but not whence it happens that people in the
country, and especially such as live in solitude, can possibly be
without it. How comes it to pass that these do not a hundred times a
day elevate their minds in ecstasy to the Author of the wonders
which strike their senses? For my part, it is especially at rising,
wearied by a want of sleep, that long habit inclines me to this
elevation which imposes not the fatigue of thinking. But to this
effect my eyes must be struck with the ravishing beauties of nature.
In my chamber I pray less frequently, and not so fervently; but at the
view of a fine landscape I feel myself moved, but by what I am
unable to tell. I have somewhere read of a wise bishop who in a
visit to his diocese found an old woman whose only prayer consisted in
the single interjection "Oh!" "Good mother," said he to her, "continue
to pray in this manner; your prayer is better than ours." This
better prayer is mine also.
  After breakfast, I hastened, with a frown on my brow, to write a few
pitiful letters, longing ardently for the moment after which I
should have no more to write. I busied myself for a few minutes
about my books and papers, to unpack and arrange them, rather than
to read what they contained; and this arrangement, which to me
became the work of Penelope, gave me the pleasure of musing for a
while. I then grew weary, and quitted my books to spend the three or
four hours which remained to me of the morning in the study of botany,
and especially of the system of Linnaeus, of which I became so
passionately fond, that, after having felt how useless my attachment
to it was, I yet could not entirely shake it off. This great
observer is, in my opinion, the only one who, with Ludwig, has
hitherto considered botany as a naturalist and a philosopher; but he
has too much studied it in herbals and gardens, and not sufficiently
in nature herself. For my part, whose garden was always the whole
island, the moment I wanted to make or verity an observation, I ran
into the woods or meadows with my book under my arm, and there laid
myself upon the ground near the plant in question, to examine it at my
ease as it stood. This method was of great service to me in gaining
a knowledge of vegetables in their natural state, before they had been
cultivated and changed in their nature by the hands of men. Fagon,
first physician to Louis XIV., and who named and perfectly knew all
the plants in the royal garden, is said to have been so ignorant in
the country as not to know how to distinguish the same plants. I am
precisely the contrary. I know something of the work of nature, but
nothing of that of the gardener.
  I gave every afternoon totally up to my indolent and careless
disposition, and to following without regularity the impulse of the
moment. When the weather was calm, I frequent went immediately after I
rose from dinner, and alone got into the boat. The receiver had taught
me to row with one oar; I rowed out into the middle of the lake. The
moment I withdrew from the bank, I felt a secret joy which almost made
me leap, and of which it is impossible for me to tell or even
comprehend the cause, if it were not a secret congratulation on my
being out of the reach of the wicked. I afterwards rowed about the
lake, sometimes approaching the opposite bank, but never touching at
it. I often let my boat float at the mercy of the wind and water,
abandoning myself to reveries without object, and which were not the
less agreeable for their stupidity. I sometimes exclaimed, "O
nature! O my mother! I am here under thy guardianship alone; here is
no deceitful and cunning mortal to interfere between thee and me."
In this manner I withdrew half a league from land; I could have wished
the lake had been the ocean. However, to please my poor dog, who was
not so fond as I was of such a long stay on the water, I commonly
followed one constant course: this was going to land at the little
island where I walked an hour or two, or laid myself down on the grass
on the summit of the hill, there to satiate myself with the pleasure
of admiring the lake and its environs, to examine and dissect all
the herbs within my reach, and, like another Robinson Crusoe, build
myself an imaginary place of residence in the island. I became very
much attached to this eminence. When I brought Theresa, with the
wife of the receiver and her sisters, to walk there, how proud was I
to be their pilot and guide! We took there rabbits to stock it. This
was another source of pleasure to Jean-Jacques. These animals rendered
the island still more interesting to me. I afterwards went to it
more frequently, and with greater pleasure, to observe the progress of
the new inhabitants.
  To these amusements I added one which recalled to my recollection
the delightful life I led at the Charmettes, and to which the season
particularly invited me. This was assisting in the rustic labors of
gathering of roots and fruits, of which Theresa and I made it a
pleasure to partake, with the wife of the receiver and his family. I
remember a Bernois, one M. Kirkeberguer, coming to see me, found me
perched upon a tree with a sack fastened to my waist, and already so
full of apples that I could not stir from the branch on which I stood.
I was not sorry to be caught in this and similar situations. I hoped
the people of Berne, witnesses to the employment of my leisure,
would no longer think of disturbing my tranquillity but leave me at
peace in my solitude. I should have preferred being confined there
by their desire: this would have rendered the continuation of my
repose more certain.
  This is another declaration upon which I am previously certain of
the incredulity of many of my readers, who obstinately continue to
judge of me by themselves, although they cannot but have seen, in
the course of my life, a thousand internal affections which bore no
resemblance to any of theirs. But what is still more extraordinary is,
that they refuse me every sentiment, good or indifferent, which they
have not, and are constantly ready to attribute to me such bad ones as
cannot enter the heart of man: in this case they find it easy to set
me in opposition to nature, and to make of me such a monster as cannot
in reality exist. Nothing absurd appears to them incredible, the
moment it has a tendency to blacken me, and nothing in the least
extraordinary seem to them possible, if it tends to do me honor.
  But, notwithstanding what they may think or say, I will still
continue faithfully to state what J. J. Rousseau was, did, and
thought; without explaining, or justifying, the singularity of his
sentiments and ideas, or endeavoring to discover whether or others
have thought as he did. I became so delighted with the island of St.
Pierre, and my residence there was so agreeable to me that, by
concentrating all my desires within it, I formed the wish that I might
stay there to the end of my life. The visits I had to return in the
neighborhood, the journeys I should be under the necessity of making
to Neuchatel, Bienne, Yverdon, and Nidau, already fatigued my
imagination. A day passed out of the island seemed to me a loss of
so much happiness, and to go beyond the bounds of the lake was to go
out of my element. Past experience had besides rendered me
apprehensive. The very satisfaction that I received from anything
whatever was sufficient to make me fear the loss of it, and the ardent
desire I had to end my days in that island, was inseparable from the
apprehension of being obliged to leave it. I had contracted a habit of
going in the evening to sit upon the sandy shore, especially when
the lake was agitated. I felt a singular pleasure in seeing the
waves break at my feet. I formed of them in my imagination the image
of the tumult of the world contrasted with the peace of my habitation;
and this pleasing idea sometimes softened me even to tears. The repose
I enjoyed with ecstasy was disturbed by nothing but the fear of
being deprived of it, but this inquietude was accompanied with some
bitterness. I felt my situation so precarious as not to dare to depend
upon its continuance. "Ah! how willingly," said I to myself, "would
I renounce the liberty of quitting this place, for which I have no
desire, for the assurance of always remaining in it. Instead of
being permitted to stay here by favor, why am I not detained by force!
They who suffer me to remain may in a moment drive me away, and can
I hope my persecutors, seeing me happy, will leave me here to continue
to be so? Permitting me to live in the island is but a trifling favor.
I could wish to be condemned to do it, and constrained to remain
here that I may not be obliged to go elsewhere." I cast an envious eye
upon Micheli du Cret, who, quiet in the castle of Arbourg, had only to
determine to be happy to become so. In fine, by abandoning myself to
these reflections, and the alarming apprehensions of new storms always
ready to break over my head, I wished for them with an incredible
ardor, and that instead of suffering me to reside in the island, the
Bernois would give it me for a perpetual prison: and I can assert that
had it depended upon me to get myself condemned to this, I would
most joyfully have done it, preferring a thousand times the
necessity of passing my life there to the danger of being driven to
another place.
  This fear did not long remain on my mind. When I least expected what
was to happen, I received a letter from the bailiff of Nidau, within
whose jurisdiction the island of St. Peter was; by his letter he
announced to me from their excellencies an order to quit the island
and their states. I thought myself in a dream. Nothing could be less
natural, reasonable, or foreseen than such an order: for I had
considered my apprehensions as the result of inquietude in a man whose
imagination was disturbed by his misfortunes, and not to proceed
from a foresight which could have the least foundation. The measures I
had taken to insure myself the tacit consent of the sovereign, the
tranquillity with which I had been left to make my establishment,
the visits of several people from Berne, and that of the bailiff
himself, who had shown me such friendship and attention, and the rigor
of the season in which it was barbarous to expel a man who was
sickly and infirm, all these circumstances made me and many people
believe that there was some mistake in the order, and that
ill-disposed people had purposely chosen the time of the vintage and
the vacation of the senate suddenly to do me an injury.
  Had I yielded to the first impulse of my indignation, I should
immediately have departed. But to what place was I to go? What was
to become of me at the beginning of the winter, without object,
preparation, guide, or carriage? Not to leave my papers and effects at
the mercy of the first comer, time was necessary to make proper
arrangements, and it was not stated in the order whether or not this
would be granted me. The continuance of misfortune began to weigh down
my courage. For the first time in my life I felt my natural
haughtiness stoop to the yoke of necessity, and, notwithstanding the
murmurs of my heart, I was obliged to demean myself by asking for a
delay. I applied to M. de Graffenried, who had sent me the order,
for an explanation of it. His letter, conceived in the strongest terms
of disapprobation of the step that had been taken, assured me it was
with the greatest regret he communicated to me the nature of it, and
the expressions of grief and esteem it contained seemed so many gentle
invitations to open to him my heart: I did so. I had no doubt but my
letter would open the eyes of my persecutors, and that if so cruel
an order was not revoked, at least a reasonable delay, perhaps the
whole winter, to make the necessary preparations for my retreat, and
to choose a place of abode, would be granted me.
  Whilst I waited for an answer, I reflected upon my situation, and
deliberated upon the steps I had to take. I perceived so many
difficulties on all sides, the vexation I had suffered had so strongly
affected me, and my health was then in such a bad state, that I was
quite overcome, and the effect of my discouragement was to deprive
me of the little resource which remained in my mind, by which I might,
as well as it was possible to do it, have withdrawn myself from my
melancholy situation. In whatever asylum I should take refuge, it
appeared impossible to avoid either of the two means made use of to
expel me. One of which was to stir up against me the populace by
secret maneuvers; and the other to drive me away by open force,
without giving a reason for so doing. I could not, therefore, depend
upon a safe retreat, unless I went in search of it farther than my
strength and the season seemed likely to permit. These circumstances
again bringing to my recollection the ideas which had lately
occurred to me, I wished my persecutors to condemn me to perpetual
imprisonment rather than oblige me incessantly to wander upon the
earth, by successively expelling me from the asylums of which I should
make choice; and to this effect I made them a proposal. Two days after
my first letter to M. de Graffenried, I wrote him a second, desiring
he would state what I had proposed to their excellencies. The answer
from Berne to both was an order, conceived in the most formal and
severe terms, to go out of the island, and leave every territory,
mediate and immediate of the republic, within the space of twenty-four
hours, and never to enter them again under the most grievous
penalties.
  This was a terrible moment. I have since that time felt greater
anguish, but never have I been more embarrassed. What afflicted me
most was being forced to abandon the project which had made me
desirous to pass the winter in the island. It is now time I should
relate the fatal anecdote which completed my disasters, and involved
in my ruin an unfortunate people whose rising virtues already promised
to equal those of Rome and Sparta. I had spoken of the Corsicans in
the Contrat Social as a new people, the only nation in Europe not
too worn out for legislation, and had expressed the great hope there
was of such a people if it were fortunate enough to have a wise
legislator. My work was read by some of the Corsicans, who were
sensible of the honorable manner in which I had spoken of them; and
the necessity under which they found themselves of endeavoring to
establish their republic, made their chiefs think of asking me for
my ideas upon the subject. M. Buttafuoco, of one of the first families
in the country, and captain in France, in the Royal Italians, wrote to
me to that effect, and sent me several papers for which I had asked to
make myself acquainted with the history of the nation and the state of
the country. M. Paoli, also, wrote to me several times, and though I
felt such an undertaking to be superior to my abilities, I thought I
could not refuse to give my assistance in so great and noble a work,
the moment I should have acquired all the necessary information. It
was to this effect I answered both these gentlemen, and the
correspondence lasted until my departure.
  Precisely at the same time, I heard that France was sending troops
to Corsica, and that she had entered into a treaty with the Genoese.
This treaty and sending of troops gave me uneasiness, and, without
imagining I had any further relation with the business, I thought it
impossible and the attempt ridiculous, to labor at an undertaking
which required such undisturbed tranquillity as the political
institution of a people in the moment when perhaps they were upon
the point of being subjugated. I did not conceal my fears from M.
Buttafuoco, who rather relieved me from them by the assurance that,
were there in the treaty things contrary to the liberty of his
country, a good citizen like himself would not remain as he did in the
service of France. In fact, his zeal for the legislation of the
Corsicans, and his connections with M. Paoli, could not leave a
doubt on my mind respecting him; and when I heard he made frequent
journeys to Versailles and Fontainebleau, and had conversations with
M. de Choiseul, all I concluded from the whole was, that with
respect to the real intentions of France he had assurances which he
gave me to understand, but concerning which he did not choose openly
to explain himself by letter.
  This removed a part of my apprehensions. Yet, as I could not
comprehend the meaning of the transportation of troops from France,
nor reasonably suppose they were sent to Corsica to protect the
liberty of the inhabitants, which they themselves were very well
able to defend against the Genoese, I could neither make myself
perfectly easy, nor seriously undertake the plan of the proposed
legislation, until I had solid proofs that the whole was serious,
and that the parties meant not to trifle with me. I much wished for an
interview with M. Buttafuoco, as that was certainly the best means
of coming at the explanation I wished. Of this he gave me hopes, and I
waited for it with the greatest impatience. I know not whether he
really intended me any interview or not; but had this even been the
case, my misfortunes would have prevented me from profiting by it.
  The more I considered the proposed undertaking, and the further I
advanced in the examination of the papers I had in my hands, the
greater I found the necessity of studying, in the country, the
people for whom institutions were to be made, the soil they inhabited,
and all the relative circumstances by which it was necessary to
appropriate to them that institution. I daily perceived more clearly
the impossibility of acquiring at a distance all the information
necessary to guide me. This I wrote to M. Buttafuoco, and he felt it
as I did. Although I did not form the precise resolution of going to
Corsica, I considered a good deal of the means necessary to make
that voyage. I mentioned it to M. Dastier, who having formerly
served in the island under M. de Maillebois, was necessarily
acquainted with it. He used every effort to dissuade me from this
intention, and I confess the frightful description he gave me of the
Corsicans and their country, considerably abated the desire I had of
going to live amongst them.
  But when the persecutions of Motiers made me think of quitting
Switzerland, this desire was again strengthened by the hope of at
length finding amongst these islanders the repose refused me in
every other place. One thing only alarmed me, which was my unfitness
for the active life to which I was going to be condemned, and the
aversion I had always had to it. My disposition, proper for meditating
at leisure and in solitude, was not so for speaking and acting, and
treating of affairs with men. Nature, which had endowed me with the
first talent, had refused me the last. Yet I felt that, even without
taking a direct and active part in public affairs, I should as soon as
I was in Corsica, be under the necessity of yielding to the desires of
the people, and of frequently conferring with the chiefs. The object
even of the voyage required that, instead of seeking retirement, I
should in the heart of the country endeavor to gain the information of
which I stood in need. It was certain that I should no longer be
master of my own time, and that, in spite of myself, precipitated into
the vortex in which I was not born to move, I should there lead a life
contrary to my inclination, and never appear but to disadvantage. I
foresaw, that, ill supporting by my presence the opinion my books
might have given the Corsicans of my capacity, I should lose my
reputation amongst them, and, as much to their prejudice as my own, be
deprived of the confidence they had in me, without which, however, I
could not successfully produce the work they expected from my pen. I
was certain that, by thus going out of my sphere, I should become
useless to the inhabitants, and render myself unhappy.
  Tormented, beaten by storms from every quarter, and, for several
years past, fatigued by journeys and persecution, I strongly felt a
want of the repose of which my barbarous enemies wantonly deprived me:
I sighed more than ever after that delicious indolence, that soft
tranquillity of body and mind, which I had so much desired, and to
which, now that I had recovered from the chimeras of love and
friendship, my heart limited its supreme felicity. I viewed with
terror the work I was about to undertake; the tumultuous life into
which I was to enter made me tremble, and if the grandeur, beauty, and
utility of the object animated my courage, the impossibility of
conquering so many difficulties entirely deprived me of it.
  Twenty years of profound meditation in solitude would have been less
painful to me than an active life of six months in the midst of men
and public affairs, with a certainty of not succeeding in my
undertaking.
  I thought of an expedient which seemed proper to obviate every
difficulty. Pursued by the underhand dealings of my secret persecutors
to every place in which I took refuge, and seeing no other except
Corsica where I could in my old days hope for the repose I had until
then been everywhere deprived of, I resolved to go there with the
directions of M. Buttafuoco as soon as this was possible, but to
live there in tranquillity; renouncing, in appearance, everything
relative to legislation, and, in some measure to make my hosts a
return for their hospitality, to confine myself to writing in the
country the history of the Corsicans, with a reserve in my own mind of
the intention of secretly acquiring the necessary information to
become more useful to them should I see a probability of success. In
this manner, by not entering into an engagement, I hoped to be enabled
better to meditate in secret and more at my ease, a plan which might
be useful to their purpose, and this without much breaking in upon
my dearly beloved solitude, or submitting to a kind of life which I
had ever found insupportable.
  But the journey was not, in my situation, a thing so easy to get
over. According to what M. Dastier had told me of Corsica, I could not
expect to find there the most simple conveniences of life, except such
as I should take with me; linen, clothes, plate, kitchen furniture,
and books, all were to be conveyed thither. To get there myself with
my gouvernante, I had the Alps to cross, and in a journey of two
hundred leagues to drag after me all my baggage; I had also to pass
through the states of several sovereigns, and according to the example
set to all Europe, I had, after what had befallen me, naturally to
expect to find obstacles in every quarter, and that each sovereign
would think he did himself honor by overwhelming me with some new
insult, and violating in my person all the rights of persons and
humanity. The immense expense, fatigue, and risk of such a journey
made a previous consideration of them, and weighing every
difficulty, the first step necessary. The idea of being alone, and, at
my age, without resource, far removed from all my acquaintance, and at
the mercy of these semi-barbarous and ferocious people, such as M.
Dastier had described them to me, was sufficient to make me deliberate
before I resolved to expose myself to such dangers. I ardently
wished for the interview for which M. Buttafuoco had given me reason
to hope, and I waited the result of it to guide me in my
determination.
  Whilst I thus hesitated came on the persecutions of Motiers, which
obliged me to retire. I was not prepared for a long journey,
especially to Corsica. I expected to hear from Buttafuoco; I took
refuge in the island of St. Pierre, whence I was driven at the
beginning of winter, as I have already stated. The Alps, covered
with snow, then rendered my emigration impracticable, especially
with the promptitude required from me. It is true, the extravagant
severity of a like order rendered the execution of it almost
impossible; for, in the midst of that concentered solitude, surrounded
by water, and having but twenty-four hours after receiving the order
to prepare for my departure, and find a boat and carriages to get
out of the island and the territory, had I had wings, I should
scarcely have been able to pay obedience to it. This I wrote to the
bailiff of Nidau, in answer to his letter, and hastened to take my
departure from a country of iniquity. In this manner was I obliged
to abandon my favorite project, for which reason, not having in my
oppression been able to prevail upon my persecutors to dispose of me
otherwise, I determined, in consequence of the invitation of my lord
marshal, upon journey to Berlin, leaving Theresa to pass the winter in
the island of St. Pierre, with my books and effects, and depositing my
papers in the hands of M. du Peyrou. I used so much diligence that the
next morning I left the island and arrived at Bienne before noon. An
accident, which I cannot pass over in silence, had here well nigh
put an end to my journey.
  As soon as the news of my having received an order to quit my asylum
was circulated, I received a great number of visits from the
neighborhood, and especially from the Bernois, who came with the
most detestable falsehood to flatter and soothe me, protesting that my
persecutors had seized the moment of the vacation of the senate to
obtain and send me the order, which, said they, had excited the
indignation of the two hundred. Some of these comforters came from the
city of Bienne, a little free state within that of Berne, and
amongst others a young man of the name of Wildremet, whose family
was of the first rank, and had the greatest credit in that little
city. Wildremet strongly solicited me in the name of his
fellow-citizens to choose my retreat amongst them, assuring me that
they were anxiously desirous of it, and that they would think it an
honor and their duty to make me forget the persecutions I had
suffered! that with them I had nothing to fear from the influence of
the Bernois, that Bienne was a free city, governed by its own laws,
and that the citizens were unanimously resolved not to hearken to
any solicitation which should be unfavorable to me.
  Wildremet perceiving all he could say to be ineffectual, brought
to his aid several other persons, as well from Bienne and the environs
as from Berne; even, and amongst others, the same Kirkeberguer, of
whom I have spoken, who, after my retreat to Switzerland had
endeavored to obtain my esteem, and by his talents and principles
had interested me in his favor. But I received much less expected
and more weighty solicitations from M. Barthes, secretary to the
embassy from France, who came with Wildremet to see me, exhorted me to
accept his invitation, and surprised me by the lively and tender
concern he seemed to feel for my situation. I did not know M. Barthes;
however I perceived in what he said the warmth and zeal of friendship,
and that he had it at heart to persuade me to fix my residence at
Bienne. He made the most pompous eulogium of the city and its
inhabitants, with whom he showed himself so intimately connected as to
call them several times in my presence his patrons and fathers.
  This from Barthes bewildered me in my conjectures. I had always
suspected M. de Choiseul to be the secret author of all the
persecutions I suffered in Switzerland. The conduct of the resident of
Geneva, and that of the ambassador at Soleure but too much confirmed
my suspicion; I perceived the secret influence of France in everything
that happened to me at Berne, Geneva, and Neuchatel, and I did not
think I had any powerful enemy in that kingdom, except the Duke de
Choiseul. What therefore could I think of the visit of Barthes and the
tender concern he showed for my welfare? My misfortunes had not yet
destroyed the confidence natural to my heart, and I had still to learn
from experience to discern snares under the appearance of
friendship. I sought with surprise the reason of the benevolence of M.
Barthes; I was not weak enough to believe he had acted from himself;
there was in his manner something ostentatious, an affectation even,
which declared a concealed intention, and I was far from having
found in any of these little subaltern agents that generous
intrepidity which, when I was in a similar employment, had often
caused a fermentation in my heart. I had formerly known something of
the Chevalier Beauteville, at the castle of Montmorency; he had
shown me marks of esteem; since his appointment to the embassy he
had given me proofs of his not having entirely forgotten me,
accompanied with an invitation to go and see him at Soleure. Though
I did not accept this invitation, I was extremely sensible of his
civility, not having been accustomed to be treated with such
kindness by people in the place. I presumed M. de Beauteville, obliged
to follow his instructions in what related to the affairs of Geneva,
yet pitying me under my misfortunes, had by his private cares prepared
for me the asylum of Bienne, that I might live there in peace under
his auspices. I was properly sensible of his attention, but without
wishing to profit by it, and quite determined upon the journey to
Berlin, I sighed after the moment in which I was to see my lord
marshal, persuaded I should in future find real repose and lasting
happiness nowhere but near his person.
  On my departure from the island, Kirkeberguer accompanied me to
Bienne. I found Wildremet and other Biennois, who, by the water
side, waited my getting out of the boat. We all dined together at
the inn, and on my arrived there my first care was to provide a
chaise, being determined to set off the next morning. Whilst we were
at dinner, these gentlemen repeated their solicitations to prevail
upon me to stay with them, and this with such warmth and obliging
protestations, that notwithstanding all my resolutions, my heart,
which has never been able to resist friendly attentions, received an
impression from theirs; the moment they perceived I was shaken they
redoubled their efforts with so much effect that I was at length
overcome, and consented to remain at Bienne, at least until the
spring.
  Wildremet immediately set about providing me with a lodging, and
boasted, as of a fortunate discovery, of a dirty little chamber in the
back of the house, on the third story, looking into a courtyard, where
I had for a view the display of the stinking skins of a dresser of
chamois leather. My host was a man of a mean appearance, and a good
deal of a rascal; the next day after I went to his house I heard
that he was a debauchee, a gamester, and in bad credit in the
neighborhood. He had neither wife, children, nor servants, and shut up
in my solitary chamber, I was in the midst of one of the most
agreeable countries in Europe, lodged in a manner to make me die of
melancholy in the course of a few days. What affected me most was,
that, notwithstanding what I had heard of the anxious wish of the
inhabitants to receive me amongst them, I had not perceived, as I
passed through the streets, anything polite towards me in their
manners, or obliging in their looks. I was, however, determined to
remain there; but I learned, saw, and felt, the day after, that
there was in the city a terrible fermentation, of which I was the
cause. Several persons hastened obligingly to inform me that on the
next day I was to receive an order, conceived in most severe terms,
immediately to quit the state, that is the city. I had nobody in
whom I could confide; they who had detained me were dispersed.
Wildremet had disappeared; I heard no more of Barthes, and it did
not appear that his recommendation had brought me into great favor
with those whom he had styled his patrons and fathers. One M. de Van
Travers, a Bernois, who had an agreeable house not far from the
city, offered it me for my asylum, hoping, as he said, that I might
there avoid being stoned. The advantage this offer held out was not
sufficiently flattering to tempt me to prolong my abode with these
hospitable people.
  Yet, having lost three days by the delay, I had greatly exceeded the
twenty-four hours the Bernois had given me to quit their states, and
knowing their severity, I was not without apprehensions as to the
manner in which they would suffer me to cross them, when the bailiff
of Nidau came opportunely and relieved me from my embarrassment. As he
had highly disapproved of the violent proceedings of their
excellencies, he thought, in his generosity, he owed me some public
proof of his taking no part in them, and had courage to leave his
bailiwick to come and pay me a visit at Bienne. He did me this favor
the evening before my departure, and far from being incognito he
affected ceremony, coming in fiocchi in his coach with his
secretary, and brought me a passport in his own name that I might
cross the state of Berne at my ease, and without fear of
molestation. I was more flattered by the visit than by the passport,
and should have been as sensible of the merit of it, had it had for
object any other person whatsoever. Nothing makes a greater impression
upon my heart than a well-timed act of courage in favor of the weak
unjustly oppressed.
  At length, after having with difficulty procured a chaise, I next
morning left this barbarous country, before the arrival of the
deputation with which I was to be honored, and even before I had
seen Theresa, to whom I had written to come to me, when I thought I
should remain at Bienne, and whom I had scarcely time to countermand
by a short letter, informing her of my new disaster. In the third part
of my memoirs, if ever I be able to write them, I shall state in
what manner, thinking to set off for Berlin, I really took my
departure for England, and the means by which the two ladies who
wished to dispose of my person, after having by their maneuvers driven
me from Switzerland, where I was not sufficiently in their power, at
last delivered me into the hands of their friends.
  [I added what follows on reading my memoirs to M. and Madam, the
Countess of Egmont, the Prince Pignatelli, the Marchioness of Mesme,
and the Marquis of Juigne.
  "I have written the truth: if any person has heard of things
contrary to those I have just stated, were they a thousand times
proved, he has heard calumny and falsehood; and if he refuses
thoroughly to examine and compare them with me whilst I am alive, he
is not a friend either to justice or truth. For my part, I openly, and
without the least fear declare, that whoever, even without having read
my works, shall have examined with his own eyes my disposition,
character, manners, inclinations, pleasures, and habits, and pronounce
me a dishonest man, is himself one who deserves a gibbet."
  Thus I concluded, and every person was silent; Madam d'Egmont was
the only person who seemed affected: she visibly trembled, but soon
recovered herself, and was silent like the rest of the company. Such
were the fruits of my reading and declaration.]

                        THE END
.