FOOTNOTES:

Not the least curious of his correspondence at this time is that with the Prince of Würtemberg, then living near Lausanne.[143]The prince had a little daughter four months old, and he was resolved that her upbringing should be carried on as the author of Emilius might please to direct. Rousseau replied courteously that he did not pretend to direct the education of princes or princesses.[144]His undaunted correspondent sent him full details of his babe's habits and faculties, and continued to do so at short intervals, with the fondness of a young mother or an old nurse. Rousseau was interested, and took some trouble to draw up rules for the child's nurture and admonition. One may smile now and then at the prince's ingenuous zeal, but his fervid respect and devotion for the teacher in whom he thought he had found the wisest man that ever lived, and who had at any rate spoken the word that kindled the love of virtue and truth in him, his eagerness to know what Rousseau thought right, and his equal eagerness in trying to do it, his care to arrange his household in a simpleand methodical way to please his master, his discipular patience when Rousseau told him that his verses were poor, or that he was too fond of his wife,—all this is a little uncommon in a prince, and deserves a place among the ample mass of other evidence of the power which Rousseau's pictures of domestic simplicity and wise and humane education had in the eighteenth century. It gives us a glimpse, close and direct, of the naturalist revival reaching up into high places. But the trade of philosopher in such times is perhaps an irksome one, and Rousseau was the private victim of his public action. His prince sent multitudes of Germans to visit the sage, and his letters, endless with their details of the nursery, may well have become a little tedious to a worn-out creature who only wanted to be left alone.[145]The famous Prince Henry, Frederick's brother, thought a man happy who could have the delight of seeing Rousseau as often as he chose.[146]People forgot the other side of this delight, and the unlucky philosopher found in a hundred ways alike from enemies and the friends whose curiosity makes them as bad as enemies, that the pedestal of glory partakes of the nature of the pillory or the stocks.

It is interesting to find the famous English names of Gibbon and Boswell in the list of the multitudeswith whom he had to do at this time.[147]The former was now at Lausanne, whither he had just returned from that memorable visit to England which persuaded him that his father would never endure his alliance with the daughter of an obscure Swiss pastor. He had just "yielded to his fate, sighed as a lover, and obeyed as a son." "How sorry I am for our poor Mademoiselle Curchod," writes Moultou to Rousseau; "Gibbon whom she loves, and to whom she has sacrificed, as I know, some excellent matches, has come to Lausanne, but cold, insensible, and as entirely cured of his old passion as she is far from cure. She has written me a letter that makes my heart ache." He then entreats Rousseau to use his influence with Gibbon, who is on the point of starting for Motiers, by extolling to him the lady's worth and understanding.[148]"I hope Mr. Gibbon will not come," replied the sage; "his coldness makes me think ill of him. I have been looking over his book again [theEssai sur l'étude de la littérature, 1761]; he runs after brilliance too much, and is strained and stilted. Mr. Gibbon is not the man for me, and I do not think he is the man for Mademoiselle Curchod either."[149]Whether Gibbon went or not, we do not know. He knew in after years what had been said of him by Jean Jacques, and protested with mild pomp that this extraordinary man should have beenless precipitate in condemning the moral character and the conduct of a stranger.[150]

Boswell, as we know, had left Johnson "rolling his majestic frame in his usual manner" on Harwich beach in 1763, and was now on his travels. Like many of his countrymen, he found his way to Lord Marischal, and here his indomitable passion for making the personal acquaintance of any one who was much talked about, naturally led him to seek so singular a character as the man who was now at Motiers. What Rousseau thought of one who was as singular a character as himself in another direction, we do not know.[151]Lord Marischal warned Rousseau that his visitor is of excellent disposition, but full of visionary ideas, even having seen spirits—a serious proof of unsoundness to a man who had lived in the very positive atmosphere of Frederick's court at Berlin. "I only hope," says the sage Scot, of the Scot who was not sage, "that he may not fall intothe hands of people who will turn his head: he was very pleased with the reception you gave him."[152]As it happens, he was the means of sending Boswell to a place where his head was turned, though not very mischievously. Rousseau was at that time full of Corsican projects, of which this is the proper place for us very briefly to speak.

The prolonged struggles of the natives of Corsica to assert their independence of the oppressive administration of the Genoese, which had begun in 1729, came to end for a moment in 1755, when Paoli (1726-1807) defeated the Genoese, and proceeded to settle the government of the island. In the Social Contract Rousseau had said, "There is still in Europe one country capable of legislation, and that is the island of Corsica. The valour and constancy with which this brave people has succeeded in recovering and defending its liberty, entitle it to the good fortune of having some wise man to teach them how to preserve it. I have a presentiment that this little isle will one day astonish Europe,"[153]—a presentiment that in a sense came true enough long after Rousseau was gone, in a man who was born on the little island seven years later than the publication of this passage. Some of the Corsican leaders were highly flattered, and in August 1764, Buttafuoco entered into correspondence with Rousseau for the purpose of inducing him to draw up a set of political institutions and a code of laws. Paoli himself was too shrewd to have much belief inthe application of ideal systems, and we are assured that he had no intention of making Rousseau the Solon of his island, but only of inducing him to inflame the gallantry of its inhabitants by writing a history of their exploits.[154]Rousseau, however, did not understand the invitation in this narrower sense. He replied that the very idea of such a task as legislation transported his soul, and he entered into it with the liveliest ardour. He resolved to quarter himself with Theresa in a cottage in some lonely district in the island; in a year he would collect the necessary information as to the manners and opinions of the inhabitants, and three years afterwards he would produce a set of institutions that should be fit for a free and valorous people.[155]In the midst of this enthusiasm (May 1765) he urged Boswell to visit Corsica, and gave him a letter to Paoli, with results which we know in the shape of an Account of Corsica (1768), and in a feverishness of imagination upon the subject for many a long day afterwards. "Mind your own affairs," at length cried Johnson sternly to him, "and leave the Corsicans to theirs; I wish you would empty your head of Corsica."[156]At the end of 1765, the immortal hero-worshipper on his return expected to come upon his hero at Motiers, but finding that he was in Paris wrote him a wonderful letter inwonderful French. "You will forget all your cares for many an evening, while I tell you what I have seen. I owe you the deepest obligation for sending me to Corsica. The voyage has done me marvellous good. It has made me as if all the lives of Plutarch had sunk into my soul.... I am devoted to the Corsicans heart and soul; if you, illustrious Rousseau, the philosopher whom they have chosen to help them by your lights to preserve and enjoy the liberty which they have acquired with so much heroism—if you have cooled towards these gallant islanders, why then I am sorry for you, that is all I can say."[157]

Alas, by this time the gallant islanders had been driven out of Rousseau's mind by personal mishaps. First, Voltaire or some other enemy had spread the rumour that the invitation to become the Lycurgus of Corsica was a practical joke, and Rousseau's suspicious temper found what he took for confirmation of this in some trifling incidents with which wecertainly need not concern ourselves.[158]Next, a very real storm had burst upon him which drove him once more to seek a new place of shelter, other than an island occupied by French troops. For France having begun by despatching auxiliaries to the assistance of the Genoese (1764), ended by buying the island from the Genoese senate, with a sort of equity of redemption (1768)—an iniquitous transaction, as Rousseau justly called it, equally shocking to justice, humanity, reason, and policy.[159]Civilisation would have been saved one of its sorest trials if Genoa could have availed herself of her equity, and so have delivered France from the acquisition of the most terrible citizen that ever scourged a state.[160]

The condemnation of Rousseau by the Council in 1762 had divided Geneva into two camps, and was followed by a prolonged contention between his partisans and his enemies. The root of the contention was political rather than theological. To take Rousseau's side was to protest against the oligarchic authority which had condemned him, and the quarrel about Emilius was only an episode in the long war between the popular and aristocratic parties. Thisstrife, after coming to a height for the first time in 1734, had abated after the pacification of 1738, but the pacification was only effective for a time, and the roots of division were still full of vitality. The lawfulness of the authority and the regularity of the procedure by which Rousseau had been condemned, offered convenient ground for carrying on the dispute, and its warmth was made more intense by the suggestion on the popular side that perhaps the religion of the book which the oligarchs had condemned was more like Christianity than the religion of the oligarchs who condemned it.

Rousseau was too near the scene of the quarrel, too directly involved in its issues, too constantly in contact with the people who were engaged in it, not to feel the angry buzzings very close about his ears. If he had been as collected and as self-possessed as he loved to fancy, they would have gone for very little in the life of the day. But Rousseau never stood on the heights whence a strong man surveys with clear eye and firm soul the unjust or mean or furious moods of the world. Such achievement is not hard for the creature who is wrapped up in himself; who is careless of the passions of men about him, because he thinks they cannot hurt him, and not because he has measured them, and deliberately assigned them a place among the elements in which a man's destiny is cast. It is only hard for one who is penetrated by true interest in the opinion and action of his fellows, thus to keep both sympathy warm andself-sufficience true. The task was too hard for Rousseau, though his patience under long persecution far surpassed that of any of the other oppressed teachers of the time. In the spring of 1763 he deliberately renounced in all due forms his rights of burgess-ship and citizenship in the city and republic of Geneva.[161]And at length he broke forth against his Genevese persecutors in the Letters from the Mountain (1764), a long but extremely vigorous and adroit rejoinder to the pleas which his enemies had put forth in Tronchin's Letters from the Country. If any one now cares to satisfy himself how really unjust and illegal the treatment was, which Rousseau received at the hands of the authorities of his native city, he may do so by examining these most forcible letters. The second part of them may interest the student of political history by its account of the working of the institutions of the little republic. We seem to be reading over again the history of a Greek city; the growth of a wealthy class in face of an increasing number of poor burgesses, the imposition of burdens in unfair proportions upon the metoikoi, the gradual usurpation of legislative and administrative function (including especially the judicial) by the oligarchs, and the twisting of democratic machinery to oligarchic ends; then the growth of staseis or violent factions, followed by metabolé or overthrow of the established constitution, ending in foreign intervention. The Four Hundred at Athens would have treated anySocial Contract that should have appeared in their day, just as sternly as the Two Hundred or the Twenty-five treated the Social Contract that did appear, and for just the same reasons.

Rousseau proved his case with redundancy of demonstration. A body of burgesses had previously availed themselves (Nov. 1763) of a legal right, and made a technical representation to the Lesser Council that the laws had been broken in his case. The Council in return availed itself of an equally legal right, itsdroit négatif, and declined to entertain the representation, without giving any reasons. Unfortunately for Rousseau's comfort, the ferment which his new vindication of his cause stirred up, did not end with the condemnation and burning of his manifesto. For the parliament of Paris ordered the Letters from the Mountain to be burned, and the same decree and the same faggot served for that and for Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary (April 1765).[162]It was also burned at the Hague (Jan. 22). An observer by no means friendly to the priests noticed that at Paris it was not the fanatics of orthodoxy, but the encyclopædists and their flock, who on this occasion raised the storm and set the zeal of the magistrates in motion.[163]The vanity and egoism of rationalistic sects can be as fatal to candour, justice, and compassion as the intolerant pride of the great churches.

Persecution came nearer to Rousseau and took more inconvenient shapes than this. A terrible libel appeared (Feb. 1765), full of the coarsest calumnies. Rousseau, stung by their insolence and falseness, sent it to Paris to be published there with a prefatory note, stating that it was by a Genevese pastor whom he named. This landed him in fresh mortification, for the pastor disavowed the libel, Rousseau declined to accept the disavowal, and sensible men were wearied by acrimonious declarations, explanations, protests.[164]Then the clergy of Neuchâtel were not able any longer to resist the opportunity of inflicting such torments as they could, upon a heretic whom they might more charitably have left to those ultimate and everlasting torments which were so precious to their religious imagination. They began to press the pastor of the village where Rousseau lived, and with whom he had hitherto been on excellent terms. The pastor, though he had been liberal enough to admit his singular parishioner to the communion, in spite of the Savoyard Vicar, was not courageous enough to resist the bigotry of the professional body to which he belonged. He warned Rousseau not to present himself at the next communion. The philosopher insisted that he had a right to do this, until formally cast out by the consistory. The consistory, composed mainly of a body of peasants entirely bound to their minister in matters of religion, cited him to appear, and answer suchquestions as might test his loyalty to the faith. Rousseau prepared a most deliberate vindication of all that he had written, which he intended to speak to his rustic judges. The eve of the morning on which he had to appear, he knew his discourse by heart; when morning came he could not repeat two sentences. So he fell back on the instrument over which he had more mastery than he had over tongue or memory, and wrote what he wished to say. The pastor, in whom irritated egoism was probably by this time giving additional heat to professional zeal, was for fulminating a decree of excommunication, but there appears to have been some indirect interference with the proceedings of the consistory by the king's officials at Neuchâtel, and the ecclesiastical bolt was held back.[165]Other weapons were not wanting. The pastor proceeded to spread rumours among his flock that Rousseau was a heretic, even an atheist, and most prodigious of all, that he had written a book containing the monstrous doctrine that women have no souls. The pulpit resounded with sermons proving to the honest villagers that antichrist was quartered in their parish in very flesh. The Armenian apparel gave a high degree of plausibleness to such an opinion, and as the wretched man went by the door of his neighbours, he heard cursing and menace, while a hostile pebble now and again whistled past his ear. His botanising expeditions were believed to be devoted to search fornoxious herbs, and a man who died in the agonies of nephritic colic, was supposed to have been poisoned by him.[166]If persons went to the post-office for letters for him, they were treated with insult.[167]At length the ferment against him grew hot enough to be serious. A huge block of stone was found placed so as to kill him when he opened his door; and one night an attempt was made to stone him in his house.[168]Popular hate shown with this degree of violence was too much for his fortitude, and after a residence of rather more than three years (September 8-10, 1765), he fled from the inhospitable valley to seek refuge he knew not where.

In his rambles of a previous summer he had seen a little island in the lake of Bienne, which struck his imagination and lived in his memory. Thither he now, after a moment of hesitation, turned his steps, with something of the same instinct as draws a child towards a beam of the sun. He forgot or was heedless of the circumstance that the isle of St. Peter lay in the jurisdiction of the canton of Berne, whose government had forbidden him their territory. Strong craving for a little ease in the midst of his wretchedness extinguished thought of jurisdictions and proscriptive decrees.

The spot where he now found peace for a briefspace usually disappoints the modern hunter for the picturesque, who after wearying himself with the follies of a capital seeks the most violent tonic that he can find in the lonely terrors of glacier and peak, and sees only tameness in a pygmy island, that offers nothing sublimer than a high grassy terrace, some cool over-branching avenues, some mimic vales, and meadows and vineyards sloping down to the sheet of blue water at their feet. Yet, as one sits here on a summer day, with tired mowers sleeping on their grass heaps in the sun, in a stillness faintly broken by the timid lapping of the water in the sedge, or the rustling of swift lizards across the heated sand, while the Bernese snow giants line a distant horizon with mysterious solitary shapes, it is easy to know what solace life in such a scene might bring to a man distracted by pain of body and pain and weariness of soul. Rousseau has commemorated his too short sojourn here in the most perfect of all his compositions.[169]

"I found my existence so charming, and led a life so agreeable to my humour, that I resolved here to end my days. My only source of disquiet was whether I should be allowed to carry my project out. In the midst of the presentiments that disturbed me, I would fain have had them make a perpetual prison of my refuge, to confine me in it for all the rest of my life. I longed for them to cut off all chance and all hope of leaving it; to forbid me holding any communication with the mainland, so that, knowingnothing of what was going on in the world, I might have forgotten the world's existence, and people might have forgotten mine too. They only suffered me to pass two months in the island, but I could have passed two years, two centuries, and all eternity, without a moment's weariness, though I had not, with my companion, any other society than that of the steward, his wife, and their servants. They were in truth honest souls and nothing more, but that was just what I wanted.... Carried thither in a violent hurry, alone and without a thing, I afterwards sent for my housekeeper, my books, and my scanty possessions, of which I had the delight of unpacking nothing, leaving my boxes and chests just as they had come, and dwelling in the house where I counted on ending my days, exactly as if it were an inn whence I must needs set forth on the morrow. All things went so well, just as they were, that to think of ordering them better were to spoil them. One of my greatest joys was to leave my books safely fastened up in their boxes, and to be without even a case for writing. When any luckless letter forced me to take up a pen for an answer, I grumblingly borrowed the steward's inkstand, and hurried to give it back to him with all the haste I could, in the vain hope that I should never have need of the loan any more. Instead of meddling with those weary quires and reams and piles of old books, I filled my chamber with flowers and grasses, for I was then in my first fervour for botany. Having given up employment that would be a task to me, I needed one that would be an amusement, nor cause me more pains than a sluggard might choose to take. I undertook to make theFlora petrinsularis, and to describe every single plant on the island, in detail enough to occupy me for the rest of my days. In consequence of this fine scheme, every morning after breakfast, which we all took in company, I used to go with a magnifying glass in my hand and my Systema Naturæ under my arm, to visit some district of the island. I had divided it for that purposeinto small squares, meaning to go through them one after another in each season of the year. At the end of two or three hours I used to return laden with an ample harvest, a provision for amusing myself after dinner indoors, in case of rain. I spent the rest of the morning in going with the steward, his wife, and Theresa, to see the labourers and the harvesting, and I generally set to work along with them; many a time when people from Berne came to see me, they found me perched on a high tree, with a bag fastened round my waist; I kept filling it with fruit and then let it down to the ground with a rope. The exercise I had taken in the morning and the good humour that always comes from exercise, made the repose of dinner vastly pleasant to me. But if dinner was kept up too long, and fine weather invited me forth, I could not wait, but was speedily off to throw myself all alone into a boat, which, when the water was smooth enough, I used to pull out to the middle of the lake. There, stretched at full length in the boat's bottom, with my eyes turned up to the sky, I let myself float slowly hither and thither as the water listed, sometimes for hours together, plunged in a thousand confused delicious musings, which, though they had no fixed nor constant object, were not the less on that account a hundred times dearer to me than all that I had found sweetest in what they call the pleasures of life. Often warned by the going down of the sun that it was time to return, I found myself so far from the island that I was forced to row with all my might to get in before it was pitch dark. At other times, instead of losing myself in the midst of the waters, I had a fancy to coast along the green shores of the island, where the clear waters and cool shadows tempted me to bathe. But one of my most frequent expeditions was from the larger island to the less; there I disembarked and spent my afternoon, sometimes in mimic rambles among wild elders, persicaries, willows, and shrubs of every species, sometimes settling myself on the top of a sandy knoll, covered with turf, wild thyme,flowers, even sainfoin and trefoil that had most likely been sown there in old days, making excellent quarters for rabbits. They might multiply in peace without either fearing anything or harming anything. I spoke of this to the steward. He at once had male and female rabbits brought from Neuchâtel, and we went in high state, his wife, one of his sisters, Theresa, and I, to settle them in the little islet. The foundation of our colony was a feast-day. The pilot of the Argonauts was not prouder than I, as I bore my company and the rabbits in triumph from our island to the smaller one....When the lake was too rough for me to sail, I spent my afternoon in going up and down the island, gathering plants to right and left; seating myself now in smiling lonely nooks to dream at my ease, now on little terraces and knolls, to follow with my eyes the superb and ravishing prospect of the lake and its shores, crowned on one side by the neighbouring hills, and on the other melting into rich and fertile plains up to the feet of the pale blue mountains on their far-off edge.As evening drew on, I used to come down from the high ground and sit on the beach at the water's brink in some hidden sheltering place. There the murmur of the waves and their agitation, charmed all my senses and drove every other movement away from my soul; they plunged it into delicious dreamings, in which I was often surprised by night. The flux and reflux of the water, its ceaseless stir-swelling and falling at intervals, striking on ear and sight, made up for the internal movements which my musings extinguished; they were enough to give me delight in mere existence, without taking any trouble of thinking. From time to time arose some passing thought of the instability of the things of this world, of which the face of the waters offered an image; but such light impressions were swiftly effaced in the uniformity of the ceaseless motion, which rocked me as in a cradle; it held me with such fascination that even when called at thehour and by the signal appointed, I could not tear myself away without summoning all my force.After supper, when the evening was fine, we used to go all together for a saunter on the terrace, to breathe the freshness of the air from the lake. We sat down in the arbour, laughing, chatting, or singing some old song, and then we went home to bed, well pleased with the day, and only craving another that should be exactly like it on the morrow....All is in a continual flux upon the earth. Nothing in it keeps a form constant and determinate; our affections, fastening on external things, necessarily change and pass just as they do. Ever in front of us or behind us, they recall the past that is gone, or anticipate a future that in many a case is destined never to be. There is nothing solid to which the heart can fix itself. Here we have little more than a pleasure that comes and passes away; as for the happiness that endures, I cannot tell if it be so much as known among men. There is hardly in the midst of our liveliest delights a single instant when the heart could tell us with real truth—"I would this instant might last for ever." And how can we give the name of happiness to a fleeting state that all the time leaves the heart unquiet and void, that makes us regret something gone, or still long for something to come?But if there is a state in which the soul finds a situation solid enough to comport with perfect repose, and with the expansion of its whole faculty, without need of calling back the past, or pressing on towards the future; where time is nothing for it, and the present has no ending; with no mark for its own duration and without a trace of succession; without a single other sense of privation or delight, of pleasure or pain, of desire or apprehension, than this single sense of existence—so long as such a state endures, he who finds himself in it may talk of bliss, not with a poor, relative, and imperfect happiness such as people find in the pleasures of life, but with a happinessfull, perfect, and sufficing, that leaves in the soul no conscious unfilled void. Such a state was many a day mine in my solitary musings in the isle of St. Peter, either lying in my boat as it floated on the water, or seated on the banks of the broad lake, or in other places than the little isle on the brink of some broad stream, or a rivulet murmuring over a gravel bed.What is it that one enjoys in a situation like this? Nothing outside of one's self, nothing except one's self and one's own existence.... But most men, tossed as they are by unceasing passion, have little knowledge of such a state; they taste it imperfectly for a few moments, and then retain no more than an obscure confused idea of it, that is too weak to let them feel its charm. It would not even be good in the present constitution of things, that in their eagerness for these gentle ecstasies, they should fall into a disgust for the active life in which their duty is prescribed to them by needs that are ever on the increase. But a wretch cut off from human society, who can do nothing here below that is useful and good either for himself or for other people, may in such a state find for all lost human felicities many recompenses, of which neither fortune nor men can ever rob him.'Tis true that these recompenses cannot be felt by all souls, nor in all situations. The heart must be in peace, nor any passion come to trouble its calm. There must be in the surrounding objects neither absolute repose nor excess of agitation, but a uniform and moderated movement without shock, without interval. With no movement, life is only lethargy. If the movement be unequal or too strong, it awakes us; by recalling us to the objects around, it destroys the charm of our musing, and plucks us from within ourselves, instantly to throw us back under the yoke of fortune and man, in a moment to restore us to all the consciousness of misery. Absolute stillness inclines one to gloom. It offers an image of death: then the help of a cheerful imagination is necessary, and presents itselfnaturally enough to those whom heaven has endowed with such a gift. The movement which does not come from without then stirs within us. The repose is less complete, it is true; but it is also more agreeable when light and gentle ideas, without agitating the depths of the soul, only softly skim the surface. This sort of musing we may taste whenever there is tranquillity about us, and I have thought that in the Bastile, and even in a dungeon where no object struck my sight, I could have dreamed away many a thrice pleasurable day.But it must be said that all this came better and more happily in a fruitful and lonely island, where nothing presented itself to me save smiling pictures, where nothing recalled saddening memories, where the fellowship of the few dwellers there was gentle and obliging, without being exciting enough to busy me incessantly, where, in short, I was free to surrender myself all day long to the promptings of my taste or to the most luxurious indolence.... As I came out from a long and most sweet musing fit, seeing myself surrounded by verdure and flowers and birds, and letting my eyes wander far over romantic shores that fringed a wide expanse of water bright as crystal, I fitted all these attractive objects into my dreams; and when at last I slowly recovered myself and recognised what was about me, I could not mark the point that cut off dream from reality, so equally did all things unite to endear to me the lonely retired life I led in this happy spot! Why can that life not come back to me again? Why can I not go finish my days in the beloved island, never to quit it, never again to see in it one dweller from the mainland, to bring back to me the memory of all the woes of every sort that they have delighted in heaping on my head for all these long years?... Freed from the earthly passions engendered by the tumult of social life, my soul would many a time lift itself above this atmosphere, and commune beforehand with the heavenly intelligences, into whose number it trusts to be ere long taken."

When the lake was too rough for me to sail, I spent my afternoon in going up and down the island, gathering plants to right and left; seating myself now in smiling lonely nooks to dream at my ease, now on little terraces and knolls, to follow with my eyes the superb and ravishing prospect of the lake and its shores, crowned on one side by the neighbouring hills, and on the other melting into rich and fertile plains up to the feet of the pale blue mountains on their far-off edge.

As evening drew on, I used to come down from the high ground and sit on the beach at the water's brink in some hidden sheltering place. There the murmur of the waves and their agitation, charmed all my senses and drove every other movement away from my soul; they plunged it into delicious dreamings, in which I was often surprised by night. The flux and reflux of the water, its ceaseless stir-swelling and falling at intervals, striking on ear and sight, made up for the internal movements which my musings extinguished; they were enough to give me delight in mere existence, without taking any trouble of thinking. From time to time arose some passing thought of the instability of the things of this world, of which the face of the waters offered an image; but such light impressions were swiftly effaced in the uniformity of the ceaseless motion, which rocked me as in a cradle; it held me with such fascination that even when called at thehour and by the signal appointed, I could not tear myself away without summoning all my force.

After supper, when the evening was fine, we used to go all together for a saunter on the terrace, to breathe the freshness of the air from the lake. We sat down in the arbour, laughing, chatting, or singing some old song, and then we went home to bed, well pleased with the day, and only craving another that should be exactly like it on the morrow....

All is in a continual flux upon the earth. Nothing in it keeps a form constant and determinate; our affections, fastening on external things, necessarily change and pass just as they do. Ever in front of us or behind us, they recall the past that is gone, or anticipate a future that in many a case is destined never to be. There is nothing solid to which the heart can fix itself. Here we have little more than a pleasure that comes and passes away; as for the happiness that endures, I cannot tell if it be so much as known among men. There is hardly in the midst of our liveliest delights a single instant when the heart could tell us with real truth—"I would this instant might last for ever." And how can we give the name of happiness to a fleeting state that all the time leaves the heart unquiet and void, that makes us regret something gone, or still long for something to come?

But if there is a state in which the soul finds a situation solid enough to comport with perfect repose, and with the expansion of its whole faculty, without need of calling back the past, or pressing on towards the future; where time is nothing for it, and the present has no ending; with no mark for its own duration and without a trace of succession; without a single other sense of privation or delight, of pleasure or pain, of desire or apprehension, than this single sense of existence—so long as such a state endures, he who finds himself in it may talk of bliss, not with a poor, relative, and imperfect happiness such as people find in the pleasures of life, but with a happinessfull, perfect, and sufficing, that leaves in the soul no conscious unfilled void. Such a state was many a day mine in my solitary musings in the isle of St. Peter, either lying in my boat as it floated on the water, or seated on the banks of the broad lake, or in other places than the little isle on the brink of some broad stream, or a rivulet murmuring over a gravel bed.

What is it that one enjoys in a situation like this? Nothing outside of one's self, nothing except one's self and one's own existence.... But most men, tossed as they are by unceasing passion, have little knowledge of such a state; they taste it imperfectly for a few moments, and then retain no more than an obscure confused idea of it, that is too weak to let them feel its charm. It would not even be good in the present constitution of things, that in their eagerness for these gentle ecstasies, they should fall into a disgust for the active life in which their duty is prescribed to them by needs that are ever on the increase. But a wretch cut off from human society, who can do nothing here below that is useful and good either for himself or for other people, may in such a state find for all lost human felicities many recompenses, of which neither fortune nor men can ever rob him.

'Tis true that these recompenses cannot be felt by all souls, nor in all situations. The heart must be in peace, nor any passion come to trouble its calm. There must be in the surrounding objects neither absolute repose nor excess of agitation, but a uniform and moderated movement without shock, without interval. With no movement, life is only lethargy. If the movement be unequal or too strong, it awakes us; by recalling us to the objects around, it destroys the charm of our musing, and plucks us from within ourselves, instantly to throw us back under the yoke of fortune and man, in a moment to restore us to all the consciousness of misery. Absolute stillness inclines one to gloom. It offers an image of death: then the help of a cheerful imagination is necessary, and presents itselfnaturally enough to those whom heaven has endowed with such a gift. The movement which does not come from without then stirs within us. The repose is less complete, it is true; but it is also more agreeable when light and gentle ideas, without agitating the depths of the soul, only softly skim the surface. This sort of musing we may taste whenever there is tranquillity about us, and I have thought that in the Bastile, and even in a dungeon where no object struck my sight, I could have dreamed away many a thrice pleasurable day.

But it must be said that all this came better and more happily in a fruitful and lonely island, where nothing presented itself to me save smiling pictures, where nothing recalled saddening memories, where the fellowship of the few dwellers there was gentle and obliging, without being exciting enough to busy me incessantly, where, in short, I was free to surrender myself all day long to the promptings of my taste or to the most luxurious indolence.... As I came out from a long and most sweet musing fit, seeing myself surrounded by verdure and flowers and birds, and letting my eyes wander far over romantic shores that fringed a wide expanse of water bright as crystal, I fitted all these attractive objects into my dreams; and when at last I slowly recovered myself and recognised what was about me, I could not mark the point that cut off dream from reality, so equally did all things unite to endear to me the lonely retired life I led in this happy spot! Why can that life not come back to me again? Why can I not go finish my days in the beloved island, never to quit it, never again to see in it one dweller from the mainland, to bring back to me the memory of all the woes of every sort that they have delighted in heaping on my head for all these long years?... Freed from the earthly passions engendered by the tumult of social life, my soul would many a time lift itself above this atmosphere, and commune beforehand with the heavenly intelligences, into whose number it trusts to be ere long taken."

The exquisite dream, thus set to words of most soothing music, came soon to its end. The full and perfect sufficience of life was abruptly disturbed. The government of Berne gave him notice to quit the island and their territory within fifteen days. He represented to the authorities that he was infirm and ill, that he knew not whither to go, and that travelling in wintry weather would be dangerous to his life. He even made the most extraordinary request that any man in similar straits ever did make. "In this extremity," he wrote to their representative, "I only see one resource for me, and however frightful it may appear, I will adopt it, not only without repugnance, but with eagerness, if their excellencies will be good enough to give their consent. It is that it should please them for me to pass the rest of my days in prison in one of their castles, or such other place in their states as they may think fit to select. I will there live at my own expense, and I will give security never to put them to any cost. I submit to be without paper or pen, or any communication from without, except so far as may be absolutely necessary, and through the channel of those who shall have charge of me. Only let me have left, with the use of a few books, the liberty to walk occasionally in a garden, and I am content. Do not suppose that an expedient, so violent in appearance, is the fruit of despair. My mind is perfectly calm at this moment; I have taken time to think about it, and it is only after profound consideration that Ihave brought myself to this decision. Mark, I pray you, that if this seems an extraordinary resolution, my situation is still more so. The distracted life that I have been made to lead for several years without intermission would be terrible for a man in full health; judge what it must be for a miserable invalid worn down with weariness and misfortune, and who has now no wish save only to die in a little peace."[170]

That the request was made in all sincerity we may well believe. The difference between being in prison and being out of it was really not considerable to a man who had the previous winter been confined to his chamber for eight months without a break.[171]In other respects the world was as cheerless as any prison could be. He was an exile from the only places he knew, and to him a land unknown was terrible. He had thought of Vienna, and the Prince of Würtemburg had sought the requisite permission for him, but the priests were too strong in the court of the house of Austria.[172]Madame d'Houdetot offered him a resting-place in Normandy, and Saint Lambert in Lorraine.[173]He thought of Potsdam. Rey, the printer, pressed him to go to Holland. He wondered if he should have strength to cross the Alps and make his way to Corsica. Eventually he made up his mind to go to Berlin, and he went asfar as Strasburg on his road thither.[174]Here he began to fear the rude climate of the northern capital; he changed his plans, and resolved to accept the warm invitations that he had received to cross over to England. His friends used their interest to procure a passport for him,[175]and the Prince of Conti offered him an apartment in the privileged quarter of the Temple, on his way through Paris. His own purpose seems to have been irresolute to the last, but his friends acted with such energy and bustle on his behalf that the English scheme was adopted, and he found himself in Paris (Dec. 17, 1765), on his way to London, almost before he had deliberately realised what he was doing. It was a step that led him into many fatal vexations, as we shall presently see. Meanwhile we may pause to examine the two considerable books which had involved his life in all this confusion and perplexity.

FOOTNOTES:[94]June, 1762-December, 1765.[95]Conf., xi. 175. It is generally printed in the volume of his works entitledMélanges.[96]Corr., iii. 416.[97]Conf., xi. 172.[98]For a remarkable anticipation of the ruin of France, seeConf., xi. 136.[99]M. Roguin. June 14, 1762.[100]Corr., ii. 347.[101]Streckeisen, i. 35.[102]His friend Moultou wrote him the news, Streckeisen, i. 43. Geneva was the only place at which the Social Contract was burnt. Here there were peculiar reasons, as we shall see.[103]Corr., ii. 356.[104]Ib., ii. 358, 369, etc.[105]The principality of Neuchâtel had fallen by marriage (1504) to the French house of Orleans-Longueville, which with certain interruptions retained it until the extinction of the line by the death of Marie, Duchess of Nemours (1707). Fifteen claimants arose with fifteen varieties of far-off title, as well as a party for constituting Neuchâtel a Republic and making it a fourteenth canton. (Saint Simon, v. 276.) The Estates adjudged the sovereignty to the Protestant house of Prussia (Nov. 3, 1707). Lewis XIV., as heir of the pretensions of the extinct line, protested. Finally, at the peace of Utrecht (1713), Lewis surrendered his claim in exchange for the cession by Prussia of the Principality of Orange, and Prussia held it until 1806. The disturbed history of the connection between Prussia and Neuchâtel from 1814, when it became the twenty-first canton of the Swiss Confederation, down to 1857, does not here concern us.[106]Corr., ii. 370.[107]Corr., ii. 371. July 1762.[108]D'Alembert, who knew Frederick better than any of the philosophers, to Voltaire, Nov. 22, 1765.[109]Letter to Hume; Burton'sLife of Hume, ii. 105, corroboratingConf., xii. 196.[110]Marischal to J.J.R.; Streckeisen, ii. 70.[111]Corr., iii. 40. Nov. 1, 1762.[112]Burton'sLife, ii. 113.[113]Voltaire'sCorr.(1758).Oeuv., lxxv. pp. 31 and 80.[114]Conf., xii. 237.[115]Corr., iii. 41. Nov. 11, 1762.[116]Corr., iii. 38. Oct. 30, 1762.[117]Ib., iii. 110-115. Jan. 28, 1763.[118]Bernardin de St. Pierre, xii. 103, 59, etc.[119]George Keith (1685-1778) was elder brother of Frederick's famous field-marshal, James Keith. They had taken part in the Jacobite rising of 1715, and fled abroad on its failure. James Keith brought his brother into the service of the King of Prussia, who sent him as ambassador to Paris (1751), afterwards made him Governor of Neuchâtel (1754), and eventually prevailed on the English Government to reinstate him in the rights which he had forfeited by his share in the rebellion (1763).[120]Streckeisen, ii. 98, etc.[121]One of Rousseau's chief distresses hitherto arose from the indigence in which Theresa would be placed in case of his death. Rey, the bookseller, gave her an annuity of about £16 a year, and Lord Marischal's gift seems to have been 300 louis, the only money that Rousseau was ever induced to accept from any one in his life. See Streckeisen, ii. 99;Corr., iii. 336. The most delicate and sincere of the many offers to provide for Theresa was made by Madame de Verdelin (Streckeisen, ii. 506). The language in which Madame de Verdelin speaks of Theresa in all her letters is the best testimony to character that this much-abused creature has to produce.[122]Ib., 90, 92, etc. Summer of 1763.[123]Burton'sLife of Hume, ii. 105. Oct. 2, 1762.[124]The Confessions are not our only authority for this. See Streckeisen, ii. 64; also D'Alembert to Voltaire, Sept. 8, 1762.[125]Voltaire'sCorr.Oeuv., lxvii. 458, 459, 485, etc.[126]To D'Alembert, Sept. 15, 1762.[127]Moultou to Rousseau, Streckeisen, i. 85, 87.[128]Moultou to Rousseau, Streckeisen, i. 85, 87.[129]Streckeisen, i. 50.[130]Ib., i. 76.[131]Lettre à Christophe de Beaumont, pp. 163-166.[132]Lettre à Christophe de Beaumont, pp. 130-135.[133]Lettre à Christophe de Beaumont, p. 93.[134]Carlyle'sFrederick, Bk. xxi. ch. iv. Rousseau,Corr., iii. 102.[135]Corr., iii. 57. Nov. 1762. To M. Montmollin.[136]Conf., xii. 206.[137]Conf., xii. 198.[138]Corr., iii. 295. Dec. 25, 1763.[139]Quoted in Musset-Pathay, ii. 500.[140]For instance,Corr., iii. 249.[141]Ib., iii. 364, 381.[142]Corr., iii. 181-186, etc.[143]Prince Lewis Eugene, son of Charles Alexander (reigning duke from 1733 to 1737); a younger brother of Charles Eugene, known as Schiller's Duke of Würtemberg, who reigned up to 1793. Frederick Eugene, known in the Seven Years' War, was another brother. Rousseau's correspondent became reigning duke in 1793, but only lived a year and a half afterwards.[144]Corr., iii. 250. Sept. 29, 1763.[145]The prince's letters are given in the Streckeisen collection, vol. ii.[146]Streckeisen, ii. 202.[147]Possibly Wilkes also;Corr., iv. 200.[148]Streckeisen, i. 89. June 1, 1763.[149]Corr., iii. 202. June 4, 1763.[150]Memoirs of my Life, p. 55,n.(Ed. 1862). Necker (1732-1804), whom Mdlle. Curchod ultimately married, was an eager admirer of Rousseau. "Ah, how close the tender, humane, and virtuous soul of Julie," he wrote to her author, "has brought me to you. How the reading of those letters gratified me! how many good emotions did they stir or fortify! How many sublimities in a thousand places in these six volumes; not the sublimity that perches itself in the clouds, but that which pushes everyday virtues to their highest point," and so on. Feb. 16, 1761. Streckeisen, i. 333.[151]Boswell's name only occurs twice in Rousseau's letters, I believe; once (Corr., iv. 394) as the writer of a letter which Hume was suspected of tampering with, and previously (iv. 70) as the bearer of a letter. See also Streckeisen, i. 262.[152]Streckeisen, ii. 111. Jan. 18, 1765.[153]Bk. ii. ch. x.[154]Boswell'sAccount of Corsica, p. 367.[155]The correspondence between Rousseau and Buttafuoco has been published in theOeuvres et Corr. Inédites de J.J.R., 1861. See pp. 35, 43, etc.[156]Boswell'sLife, 179, 193, etc. (Ed. 1866).[157]"Je suis tout homme de pouvoir vous regarder avec pitié!"Letter dated Jan. 4, 1766, and given by Musset-Pathay as from a Scotch lord, unnamed. Boswell had the honour of conducting Theresa to England, after Hume had taken Rousseau over. "This young gentleman," writes Hume, "very good-humoured, very agreeable, and very mad—has such a rage for literature that I dread some circumstance fatal to our friend's honour. You remember the story of Terentia, who was first married to Cicero, then to Sallust, and at last in her old age married a young nobleman, who imagined that she must possess some secret which would convey to him eloquence and genius." Burton'sLife, ii. 307, 308. Boswell mentions that he met Rousseau in England (Account of Corsica, p. 340), and also gives Rousseau's letter introducing him to Paoli (p. 266).[158]To Buttafuoco, p. 48, etc.[159]Corr., vi. 176. Feb. 26, 1770.[160]It may be worth noticing, as a link between historic personages, that Napoleon Bonaparte's first piece was aLettre à Matteo Buttafuoco(1791), the same Buttafuoco with whom Rousseau corresponded, who had been Choiseul's agent in the union of the island to France, was afterwards sent as deputy to the Constituent, and finally became the bitterest enemy of Paoli and the patriotic party.[161]Corr., iii. 190. To the First Syndic, May 12, 1763.[162]Grimm'sCorr. Lit., iv. 235. For Rousseau's opinion of his book's companion at the stake, seeCorr., iii. 442.[163]Streckeisen, ii. 526.[164]There appears to be no doubt that Rousseau was wrong in attributing to Vernes theSentimens des Citoyens.[165]Corr., iv. 116, 122 (April 1765), 165-196 (August); alsoConf., xii. 245.[166]Note to M. Auguis's edition,Corr., v. 395.[167]Corr., iv. 204.[168]Conf., xii. 259. This lapidation has sometimes been doubted, and treated as an invention of Rousseau's morbid suspicion. The official documents prove that his account was substantially true (see Musset-Pathay, ii. 559.)[169]The fifth of theRêveries. See alsoConf., 262-279, andCorr., iv. 206-224. His stay in the island was from the second week in September down to the last in October, 1765.[170]Corr., iv. 221. Oct. 20, 1765.[171]Ib., iv. 136, etc. April 27, 1765.[172]Streckeisen-Moultou, ii. 209, 212.[173]Ib., ii. 554.[174]He arrived at Strasburg on the 2d or 3d of November, left it about the end of the first week in December, and arrived in Paris on the 16th of December 1765. A sort of apocryphal tradition is said to linger in the island about Rousseau's last evening on the island, how after supper he called for a lute, and sang some passably bad verses. See M. Bougy'sJ.J. Rousseau, p. 179 (Paris: 1853.)[175]Madame de Verdelin to J.J.R. Streckeisen, ii. 532. The minister even expressed his especial delight at being able to serve Rousseau, so little seriousness was there now in the formalities of absolution.Ib.547.

[94]June, 1762-December, 1765.

[95]Conf., xi. 175. It is generally printed in the volume of his works entitledMélanges.

[96]Corr., iii. 416.

[97]Conf., xi. 172.

[98]For a remarkable anticipation of the ruin of France, seeConf., xi. 136.

[99]M. Roguin. June 14, 1762.

[100]Corr., ii. 347.

[101]Streckeisen, i. 35.

[102]His friend Moultou wrote him the news, Streckeisen, i. 43. Geneva was the only place at which the Social Contract was burnt. Here there were peculiar reasons, as we shall see.

[103]Corr., ii. 356.

[104]Ib., ii. 358, 369, etc.

[105]The principality of Neuchâtel had fallen by marriage (1504) to the French house of Orleans-Longueville, which with certain interruptions retained it until the extinction of the line by the death of Marie, Duchess of Nemours (1707). Fifteen claimants arose with fifteen varieties of far-off title, as well as a party for constituting Neuchâtel a Republic and making it a fourteenth canton. (Saint Simon, v. 276.) The Estates adjudged the sovereignty to the Protestant house of Prussia (Nov. 3, 1707). Lewis XIV., as heir of the pretensions of the extinct line, protested. Finally, at the peace of Utrecht (1713), Lewis surrendered his claim in exchange for the cession by Prussia of the Principality of Orange, and Prussia held it until 1806. The disturbed history of the connection between Prussia and Neuchâtel from 1814, when it became the twenty-first canton of the Swiss Confederation, down to 1857, does not here concern us.

[106]Corr., ii. 370.

[107]Corr., ii. 371. July 1762.

[108]D'Alembert, who knew Frederick better than any of the philosophers, to Voltaire, Nov. 22, 1765.

[109]Letter to Hume; Burton'sLife of Hume, ii. 105, corroboratingConf., xii. 196.

[110]Marischal to J.J.R.; Streckeisen, ii. 70.

[111]Corr., iii. 40. Nov. 1, 1762.

[112]Burton'sLife, ii. 113.

[113]Voltaire'sCorr.(1758).Oeuv., lxxv. pp. 31 and 80.

[114]Conf., xii. 237.

[115]Corr., iii. 41. Nov. 11, 1762.

[116]Corr., iii. 38. Oct. 30, 1762.

[117]Ib., iii. 110-115. Jan. 28, 1763.

[118]Bernardin de St. Pierre, xii. 103, 59, etc.

[119]George Keith (1685-1778) was elder brother of Frederick's famous field-marshal, James Keith. They had taken part in the Jacobite rising of 1715, and fled abroad on its failure. James Keith brought his brother into the service of the King of Prussia, who sent him as ambassador to Paris (1751), afterwards made him Governor of Neuchâtel (1754), and eventually prevailed on the English Government to reinstate him in the rights which he had forfeited by his share in the rebellion (1763).

[120]Streckeisen, ii. 98, etc.

[121]One of Rousseau's chief distresses hitherto arose from the indigence in which Theresa would be placed in case of his death. Rey, the bookseller, gave her an annuity of about £16 a year, and Lord Marischal's gift seems to have been 300 louis, the only money that Rousseau was ever induced to accept from any one in his life. See Streckeisen, ii. 99;Corr., iii. 336. The most delicate and sincere of the many offers to provide for Theresa was made by Madame de Verdelin (Streckeisen, ii. 506). The language in which Madame de Verdelin speaks of Theresa in all her letters is the best testimony to character that this much-abused creature has to produce.

[122]Ib., 90, 92, etc. Summer of 1763.

[123]Burton'sLife of Hume, ii. 105. Oct. 2, 1762.

[124]The Confessions are not our only authority for this. See Streckeisen, ii. 64; also D'Alembert to Voltaire, Sept. 8, 1762.

[125]Voltaire'sCorr.Oeuv., lxvii. 458, 459, 485, etc.

[126]To D'Alembert, Sept. 15, 1762.

[127]Moultou to Rousseau, Streckeisen, i. 85, 87.

[128]Moultou to Rousseau, Streckeisen, i. 85, 87.

[129]Streckeisen, i. 50.

[130]Ib., i. 76.

[131]Lettre à Christophe de Beaumont, pp. 163-166.

[132]Lettre à Christophe de Beaumont, pp. 130-135.

[133]Lettre à Christophe de Beaumont, p. 93.

[134]Carlyle'sFrederick, Bk. xxi. ch. iv. Rousseau,Corr., iii. 102.

[135]Corr., iii. 57. Nov. 1762. To M. Montmollin.

[136]Conf., xii. 206.

[137]Conf., xii. 198.

[138]Corr., iii. 295. Dec. 25, 1763.

[139]Quoted in Musset-Pathay, ii. 500.

[140]For instance,Corr., iii. 249.

[141]Ib., iii. 364, 381.

[142]Corr., iii. 181-186, etc.

[143]Prince Lewis Eugene, son of Charles Alexander (reigning duke from 1733 to 1737); a younger brother of Charles Eugene, known as Schiller's Duke of Würtemberg, who reigned up to 1793. Frederick Eugene, known in the Seven Years' War, was another brother. Rousseau's correspondent became reigning duke in 1793, but only lived a year and a half afterwards.

[144]Corr., iii. 250. Sept. 29, 1763.

[145]The prince's letters are given in the Streckeisen collection, vol. ii.

[146]Streckeisen, ii. 202.

[147]Possibly Wilkes also;Corr., iv. 200.

[148]Streckeisen, i. 89. June 1, 1763.

[149]Corr., iii. 202. June 4, 1763.

[150]Memoirs of my Life, p. 55,n.(Ed. 1862). Necker (1732-1804), whom Mdlle. Curchod ultimately married, was an eager admirer of Rousseau. "Ah, how close the tender, humane, and virtuous soul of Julie," he wrote to her author, "has brought me to you. How the reading of those letters gratified me! how many good emotions did they stir or fortify! How many sublimities in a thousand places in these six volumes; not the sublimity that perches itself in the clouds, but that which pushes everyday virtues to their highest point," and so on. Feb. 16, 1761. Streckeisen, i. 333.

[151]Boswell's name only occurs twice in Rousseau's letters, I believe; once (Corr., iv. 394) as the writer of a letter which Hume was suspected of tampering with, and previously (iv. 70) as the bearer of a letter. See also Streckeisen, i. 262.

[152]Streckeisen, ii. 111. Jan. 18, 1765.

[153]Bk. ii. ch. x.

[154]Boswell'sAccount of Corsica, p. 367.

[155]The correspondence between Rousseau and Buttafuoco has been published in theOeuvres et Corr. Inédites de J.J.R., 1861. See pp. 35, 43, etc.

[156]Boswell'sLife, 179, 193, etc. (Ed. 1866).

[157]"Je suis tout homme de pouvoir vous regarder avec pitié!"Letter dated Jan. 4, 1766, and given by Musset-Pathay as from a Scotch lord, unnamed. Boswell had the honour of conducting Theresa to England, after Hume had taken Rousseau over. "This young gentleman," writes Hume, "very good-humoured, very agreeable, and very mad—has such a rage for literature that I dread some circumstance fatal to our friend's honour. You remember the story of Terentia, who was first married to Cicero, then to Sallust, and at last in her old age married a young nobleman, who imagined that she must possess some secret which would convey to him eloquence and genius." Burton'sLife, ii. 307, 308. Boswell mentions that he met Rousseau in England (Account of Corsica, p. 340), and also gives Rousseau's letter introducing him to Paoli (p. 266).

[158]To Buttafuoco, p. 48, etc.

[159]Corr., vi. 176. Feb. 26, 1770.

[160]It may be worth noticing, as a link between historic personages, that Napoleon Bonaparte's first piece was aLettre à Matteo Buttafuoco(1791), the same Buttafuoco with whom Rousseau corresponded, who had been Choiseul's agent in the union of the island to France, was afterwards sent as deputy to the Constituent, and finally became the bitterest enemy of Paoli and the patriotic party.

[161]Corr., iii. 190. To the First Syndic, May 12, 1763.

[162]Grimm'sCorr. Lit., iv. 235. For Rousseau's opinion of his book's companion at the stake, seeCorr., iii. 442.

[163]Streckeisen, ii. 526.

[164]There appears to be no doubt that Rousseau was wrong in attributing to Vernes theSentimens des Citoyens.

[165]Corr., iv. 116, 122 (April 1765), 165-196 (August); alsoConf., xii. 245.

[166]Note to M. Auguis's edition,Corr., v. 395.

[167]Corr., iv. 204.

[168]Conf., xii. 259. This lapidation has sometimes been doubted, and treated as an invention of Rousseau's morbid suspicion. The official documents prove that his account was substantially true (see Musset-Pathay, ii. 559.)

[169]The fifth of theRêveries. See alsoConf., 262-279, andCorr., iv. 206-224. His stay in the island was from the second week in September down to the last in October, 1765.

[170]Corr., iv. 221. Oct. 20, 1765.

[171]Ib., iv. 136, etc. April 27, 1765.

[172]Streckeisen-Moultou, ii. 209, 212.

[173]Ib., ii. 554.

[174]He arrived at Strasburg on the 2d or 3d of November, left it about the end of the first week in December, and arrived in Paris on the 16th of December 1765. A sort of apocryphal tradition is said to linger in the island about Rousseau's last evening on the island, how after supper he called for a lute, and sang some passably bad verses. See M. Bougy'sJ.J. Rousseau, p. 179 (Paris: 1853.)

[175]Madame de Verdelin to J.J.R. Streckeisen, ii. 532. The minister even expressed his especial delight at being able to serve Rousseau, so little seriousness was there now in the formalities of absolution.Ib.547.

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