Chapter II: Persecution.94 (2)

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 such questions 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 for noxious 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 brief space 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, knowing nothing
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 the _Flora 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 purpose into 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 the hour 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 happiness full,
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 itself
naturally 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 I have 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 as far 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 entitled _Mélanges_.

[96] _Corr._, iii. 416.

[97] _Conf._, xi. 172.

[98] For a remarkable anticipation of the ruin of France, see _Conf._, 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's _Life of Hume_, ii. 105, corroborating _Conf._, xii. 196.

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

[111] _Corr._, iii. 40. Nov. 1, 1762.

[112] Burton's _Life_, ii. 113.

[113] Voltaire's _Corr._ (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's _Life 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's _Corr._ _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's _Frederick_, 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's _Account of Corsica_, p. 367.

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

[156] Boswell's _Life_, 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's _Life_, 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 a _Lettre 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's _Corr. Lit._, iv. 235. For Rousseau's opinion of his book's companion at the stake, see _Corr._, iii. 442.

[163] Streckeisen, ii. 526.

[164] There appears to be no doubt that Rousseau was wrong in attributing to Vernes the _Sentimens des Citoyens_.

[165] _Corr._, iv. 116, 122 (April 1765), 165-196 (August); also _Conf._, 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 the _Rêveries_. See also _Conf._, 262-279, and _Corr._, 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's _J.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.