Book: The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete

J >> Jean Jacques Rousseau >> The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete




This, it will soon appear, was not the only vexation caused me by
weakness; but I had others not less disagreeable which I had not brought
upon myself. The only cause of these was a desire of forcing me from my
solitude, by means of tormenting me. These originated from Diderot and the
d'Holbachiens.

[That is to take from it the old woman who was wanted in the
conspiracy. It is astonishing that, during this long quarrel,
my stupid confidence presented me from comprehending that it was
not me but her whom they wanted in Paris.]

Since I had resided at the Hermitage, Diderot incessantly
harrassed me, either himself or by means of De Leyre, and I soon
perceived from the pleasantries of the latter upon my ramblings in the
groves, with what pleasure he had travestied the hermit into the gallant
shepherd. But this was not the question in my quarrels with Diderot; the
cause of these were more serious. After the publication of Fils Naturel
he had sent me a copy of it, which I had read with the interest and
attention I ever bestowed on the works of a friend. In reading the kind
of poem annexed to it, I was surprised and rather grieved to find in it,
amongst several things, disobliging but supportable against men in
solitude, this bitter and severe sentence without the least softening:
'Il n'y a que le mechant qui fail feul.'--[The wicked only is alone.]
--This sentence is equivocal, and seems to present a double meaning; the
one true, the other false, since it is impossible that a man who is
determined to remain alone can do the least harm to anybody, and
consequently he cannot be wicked. The sentence in itself therefore
required an interpretation; the more so from an author who, when he sent
it to the press, had a friend retired from the world. It appeared to me
shocking and uncivil, either to have forgotten that solitary friend, or,
in remembering him, not to have made from the general maxim the honorable
and just exception which he owed, not only to his friend, but to so many
respectable sages, who, in all ages, have sought for peace and
tranquillity in retirement, and of whom, for the first time since the
creation of the world, a writer took it into his head indiscriminately to
make so many villains.

I had a great affection and the most sincere esteem for Diderot, and
fully depended upon his having the same sentiments for me. But tired
with his indefatigable obstinacy in continually opposing my inclinations,
taste, and manner of living, and everything which related to no person
but myself; shocked at seeing a man younger than I was wish, at all
events, to govern me like a child; disgusted with his facility in
promising, and his negligence in performing; weary of so many
appointments given by himself, and capriciously broken, while new ones
were again given only to be again broken; displeased at uselessly waiting
for him three or four times a month on the days he had assigned, and in
dining alone at night after having gone to Saint Denis to meet him, and
waited the whole day for his coming; my heart was already full of these
multiplied injuries. This last appeared to me still more serious, and
gave me infinite pain. I wrote to complain of it, but in so mild and
tender a manner that I moistened my paper with my tears, and my letter
was sufficiently affecting to have drawn others from himself. It would
be impossible to guess his answer on this subject: it was literally as
follows: "I am glad my work has pleased and affected you. You are not of
my opinion relative to hermits. Say as much good of them as you please,
you will be the only one in the world of whom I shall think well: even on
this there would be much to say were it possible to speak to you without
giving you offence. A woman eighty years of age! etc. A phrase of a
letter from the son of Madam d'Epinay which, if I know you well, must
have given you much pain, has been mentioned to me."

The last two expressions of this letter want explanation.

Soon after I went to reside at the Hermitage, Madam le Vasseur seemed
dissatisfied with her situation, and to think the habitation too retired.
Having heard she had expressed her dislike to the place, I offered to
send her back to Paris, if that were more agreeable to her; to pay her
lodging, and to have the same care taken of her as if she remained with
me. She rejected my offer, assured me she was very well satisfied with
the Hermitage, and that the country air was of service to her. This was
evident, for, if I may so speak, she seemed to become young again, and
enjoyed better health than at Paris. Her daughter told me her mother
would, on the whole, had been very sorry to quit the Hermitage, which was
really a very delightful abode, being fond of the little amusements of
the garden and the care of the fruit of which she had the handling, but
that she had said, what she had been desired to say, to induce me to
return to Paris.

Failing in this attempt they endeavored to obtain by a scruple the effect
which complaisance had not produced, and construed into a crime my
keeping the old woman at a distance from the succors of which, at her
age, she might be in need. They did not recollect that she, and many
other old people, whose lives were prolonged by the air of the country,
might obtain these succors at Montmorency, near to which I lived; as if
there were no old people, except in Paris, and that it was impossible for
them to live in any other place. Madam le Vasseur who eat a great deal,
and with extreme voracity, was subject to overflowings of bile and to
strong diarrhoeas, which lasted several days, and served her instead of
clysters. At Paris she neither did nor took anything for them, but left
nature to itself. She observed the same rule at the Hermitage, knowing
it was the best thing she could do. No matter, since there were not in
the country either physicians or apothecaries, keeping her there must, no
doubt, be with the desire of putting an end to her existence, although
she was in perfect health. Diderot should have determined at what age,
under pain of being punished for homicide, it is no longer permitted to
let old people remain out of Paris.

This was one of the atrocious accusations from which he did not except me
in his remark; that none but the wicked were alone: and the meaning of
his pathetic exclamation with the et cetera, which he had benignantly
added: A woman of eighty years of age, etc.

I thought the best answer that could be given to this reproach would be
from Madam le Vasseur herself. I desired her to write freely and
naturally her sentiments to Madam d'Epinay. To relieve her from all
constraint I would not see her letter. I showed her that which I am
going to transcribe. I wrote it to Madam d'Epinay upon the subject of an
answer I wish to return to a letter still more severe from Diderot, and
which she had prevented me from sending.

Thursday.

"My good friend. Madam le Vasseur is to write to you: I have desired her
to tell you sincerely what she thinks. To remove from her all
constraint, I have intimated to her that I will not see what she writes,
and I beg of you not to communicate to me any part of the contents of her
letter.

"I will not send my letter because you do not choose I should; but,
feeling myself grievously offended, it would be baseness and falsehood,
of either of which it is impossible for me to be guilty, to acknowledge
myself in the wrong. Holy writ commands him to whom a blow is given, to
turn the other cheek, but not to ask pardon. Do you remember the man in
comedy who exclaims, while he is giving another blows with his staff,
'This is the part of a philosopher!'

"Do not flatter yourself that he will be prevented from coming by the bad
weather we now have. His rage will give him the time and strength which
friendship refuses him, and it will be the first time in his life he ever
came upon the day he had appointed.

"He will neglect nothing to come and repeat to me verbally the injuries
with which he loads me in his letters; I will endure them all with
patience--he will return to Paris to be ill again; and, according to
custom, I shall be a very hateful man. What is to be done? Endure it
all.

"But do not you admire the wisdom of the man who would absolutely come to
Saint Denis in a hackney-coach to dine there, bring me home in a
hackney-coach, and whose finances, eight days afterwards, obliges him to
come to the Hermitage on foot? It is not possible, to speak his own
language, that this should be the style of sincerity. But were this the
case, strange changes of fortune must have happened in the course of a
week.

"I join in your affliction for the illness of madam, your mother, but you
will perceive your grief is not equal to mine. We suffer less by seeing
the persons we love ill than when they are unjust and cruel.

"Adieu, my good friend, I shall never again mention to you this unhappy
affair. You speak of going to Paris with an unconcern, which, at any
other time, would give me pleasure."

I wrote to Diderot, telling him what I had done, relative to Madam le
Vasseur, upon the proposal of Madam d'Epinay herself; and Madam le
Vasseur having, as it may be imagined, chosen to remain at the Hermitage,
where she enjoyed a good state of health, always had company, and lived
very agreeably, Diderot, not knowing what else to attribute to me as a
crime, construed my precaution into one, and discovered another in Madam
le Vasseur continuing to reside at the Hermitage, although this was by
her own choice; and though her going to Paris had depended, and still
depended upon herself, where she would continue to receive the same
succors from me as I gave her in my house.

This is the explanation of the first reproach in the letter of Diderot.
That of the second is in the letter which follows: "The learned man (a
name given in a joke by Grimm to the son of Madam d'Epinay) must have
informed you there were upon the rampart twenty poor persons who were
dying with cold and hunger, and waiting for the farthing you customarily
gave them. This is a specimen of our little babbling.....And if you
understand the rest it will amuse you perhap."

My answer to this terrible argument, of which Diderot seemed so proud,
was in the following words:

"I think I answered the learned man; that is, the farmer-general, that I
did not pity the poor whom he had seen upon the rampart, waiting for my
farthing; that he had probably amply made it up to them; that I appointed
him my substitute, that the poor of Paris would have no reason to
complain of the change; and that I should not easily find so good a one
for the poor of Montmorency, who were in much greater need of assistance.
Here is a good and respectable old man, who, after having worked hard all
his lifetime, no longer being able to continue his labors, is in his old
days dying with hunger. My conscience is more satisfied with the two
sous I give him every Monday, than with the hundred farthings I should
have distributed amongst all the beggars on the rampart. You are
pleasant men, you philosophers, while you consider the inhabitants of the
cities as the only persons whom you ought to befriend. It is in the
country men learn how to love and serve humanity; all they learn in
cities is to despise it."

Such were the singular scruples on which a man of sense had the folly to
attribute to me as a crime my retiring from Paris, and pretended to prove
to me by my own example, that it was not possible to live out of the
capital without becoming a bad man. I cannot at present conceive how I
could be guilty of the folly of answering him, and of suffering myself to
be angry instead of laughing in his fare. However, the decisions of
Madam d'Epinay and the clamors of the 'Cote in Holbachique' had so far
operated in her favor, that I was generally thought to be in the wrong;
and the D'Houdetot herself, very partial to Diderot, insisted upon my
going to see him at Paris, and making all the advances towards an
accommodation which, full and sincere as it was on my part, was not of
long duration. The victorious argument by which she subdued my heart
was, that at that moment Diderot was in distress. Besides the storm
excited against the 'Encyclopedie', he had then another violent one to
make head against, relative to his piece, which, notwithstanding the
short history he had printed at the head of it, he was accused of having
entirely taken from Goldoni. Diderot, more wounded by criticisms than
Voltaire, was overwhelmed by them. Madam de Grasigny had been malicious
enough to spread a report that I had broken with him on this account.
I thought it would be just and generous publicly to prove the contrary,
and I went to pass two days, not only with him, but at his lodgings.
This, since I had taken up my abode at the Hermitage, was my second
journey to Paris. I had made the first to run to poor Gauffecourt, who
had had a stroke of apoplexy, from which he has never perfectly
recovered: I did not quit the side of his pillow until he was so far
restored as to have no further need of my assistance.

Diderot received me well. How many wrongs are effaced by the embraces of
a friend! after these, what resentment can remain in the heart? We came
to but little explanation. This is needless for reciprocal invectives.
The only thing necessary is to know how to forget them. There had been
no underhand proceedings, none at least that had come to my knowledge:
the case was not the same with Madam d' Epinay. He showed me the plan of
the 'Pere de Famille'. "This," said I to him, "is the best defence to
the 'Fils Naturel'. Be silent, give your attention to this piece, and
then throw it at the head of your enemies as the only answer you think
proper to make them." He did so, and was satisfied with what he had
done.

I had six months before sent him the first two parts of my 'Eloisa' to
have his opinion upon them. He had not yet read the work over. We read
a part of it together. He found this 'feuillet', that was his term, by
which he meant loaded with words and redundancies. I myself had already
perceived it; but it was the babbling of the fever: I have never been
able to correct it. The last parts are not the same. The fourth
especially, and the sixth, are master-pieces of diction.

The day after my arrival, he would absolutely take me to sup with M.
d'Holbach. We were far from agreeing on this point; for I wished even to
get rid of the bargain for the manuscript on chemistry, for which I was
enraged to be obliged to that man. Diderot carried all before him. He
swore D'Holbach loved me with all his heart, said I must forgive him his
manner, which was the same to everybody, and more disagreeable to his
friends than to others. He observed to me that, refusing the produce of
this manuscript, after having accepted it two years before, was an
affront to the donor which he had not deserved, and that my refusal might
be interpreted into a secret reproach, for having waited so long to
conclude the bargain. "I see," added he, "D'Holbach every day, and know
better than you do the nature of his disposition. Had you reason to be
dissatisfied with him, do you think your friend capable of advising you
to do a mean thing?" In short, with my accustomed weakness, I suffered
myself to be prevailed upon, and we went to sup with the baron, who
received me as he usually had done. But his wife received me coldly and
almost uncivilly. I saw nothing in her which resembled the amiable
Caroline, who, when a maid, expressed for me so many good wishes. I
thought I had already perceived that since Grimm had frequented the house
of D'Aine, I had not met there so friendly a reception.

Whilst I was at Paris, Saint Lambert arrived there from the army. As I
was not acquainted with his arrival, I did not see him until after my
return to the country, first at the Chevrette, and afterwards at the
Hermitage; to which he came with Madam d'Houdetot, and invited himself to
dinner with me. It may be judged whether or not I received him with
pleasure! But I felt one still greater at seeing the good understanding
between my guests. Satisfied with not having disturbed their happiness,
I myself was happy in being a witness to it, and I can safely assert
that, during the whole of my mad passion, and especially at the moment of
which I speak, had it been in my power to take from him Madam d'Houdetot
I would not have done it, nor should I have so much as been tempted to
undertake it. I found her so amiable in her passion for Saint Lambert,
that I could scarcely imagine she would have been as much so had she
loved me instead of him; and without wishing to disturb their union, all
I really desired of her was to permit herself to be loved. Finally,
however violent my passion may have been for this lady, I found it as
agreeable to be the confidant, as the object of her amours, and I never
for a moment considered her lover as a rival, but always as my friend.
It will be said this was not love: be it so, but it was something more.

As for Saint Lambert, he behaved like an honest and judicious man: as I
was the only person culpable, so was I the only one who was punished;
this, however, was with the greatest indulgence. He treated me severely,
but in a friendly manner, and I perceived I had lost something in his
esteem, but not the least part of his friendship. For this I consoled
myself, knowing it would be much more easy to me to recover the one than
the other, and that he had too much sense to confound an involuntary
weakness and a passion with a vice of character. If even I were in fault
in all that had passed, I was but very little so. Had I first sought
after his mistress? Had not he himself sent her to me? Did not she come
in search of me? Could I avoid receiving her? What could I do? They
themselves had done the evil, and I was the person on whom it fell. In
my situation they would have done as much as I did, and perhaps more;
for, however estimable and faithful Madam d'Houdetot might be, she was
still a woman; her lover was absent; opportunities were frequent;
temptations strong; and it would have been very difficult for her always
to have defended herself with the same success against a more
enterprising man. We certainly had done a great deal in our situation,
in placing boundaries beyond which we never permitted ourselves to pass.

Although at the bottom of my heart I found evidence sufficiently
honorable in my favor, so many appearances were against me, that the
invincible shame always predominant in me, gave me in his presence the
appearance of guilt, and of this he took advantage for the purpose of
humbling me: a single circumstance will describe this reciprocal
situation. I read to him, after dinner, the letter I had written the
preceding year to Voltaire, and of which Saint Lambert had heard speak.
Whilst I was reading he fell asleep, and I, lately so haughty, at present
so foolish, dared not stop, and continued to read whilst he continued to
snore. Such were my indignities and such his revenge; but his generosity
never permitted him to exercise them; except between ourselves.

After his return to the army, I found Madam d'Houdetot greatly changed in
her manner with me. At this I was as much surprised as if it had not
been what I ought to have expected; it affected me more than it ought to
have done, and did me considerable harm. It seemed that everything from
which I expected a cure, still plunged deeper into my heart the dart,
which I at length broke in rather than draw out.

I was quite determined to conquer myself, and leave no means untried to
change my foolish passion into a pure and lasting friendship. For this
purpose I had formed the finest projects in the world; for the execution
of which the concurrence of Madam d' Houdetot was necessary. When I
wished to speak to her I found her absent and embarrassed; I perceived I
was no longer agreeable to her, and that something had passed which she
would not communicate to me, and which I have never yet known. This
change, and the impossibility of knowing the reason of it, grieved me to
the heart.

She asked me for her letters; these I returned her with a fidelity of
which she did me the insult to doubt for a moment.

This doubt was another wound given to my heart, with which she must have
been so well acquainted. She did me justice, but not immediately: I
understood that an examination of the packet I had sent her, made her
perceive her error; I saw she reproached herself with it, by which I was
a gainer of something. She could not take back her letters without
returning me mine. She told me she had burnt them: of this I dared to
doubt in my turn, and I confess I doubt of it at this moment. No, such
letters as mine to her were, are never thrown into the fire. Those of
Eloisa have been found ardent.

Heavens! what would have been said of these! No, No, she who can
inspire a like passion, will never have the courage to burn the proofs of
it. But I am not afraid of her having made a bad use of them: of this I
do not think her capable; and besides I had taken proper measures to
prevent it. The foolish, but strong apprehension of raillery, had made
me begin this correspondence in a manner to secure my letters from all
communication. I carried the familiarity I permitted myself with her in
my intoxication so far as to speak to her in the singular number: but
what theeing and thouing! she certainly could not be offended with it.
Yet she several times complained, but this was always useless: her
complaints had no other effect than that of awakening my fears, and I
besides could not suffer myself to lose ground. If these letters be not
yet destroyed, and should they ever be made public, the world will see in
what manner I have loved.

The grief caused me by the coldness of Madam d'Houdetot, and the
certainty of not having merited it, made me take the singular resolution
to complain of it to Saint Lambert himself. While waiting the effect of
the letter I wrote to him, I sought dissipations to which I ought sooner
to have had recourse. Fetes were given at the Chevrette for which I
composed music. The pleasure of honoring myself in the eyes of Madam
d'Houdetot by a talent she loved, warmed my imagination, and another
object still contributed to give it animation, this was the desire the
author of the 'Devin du Villaqe' had of showing he understood music; for
I had perceived some persons had, for a considerable time past,
endeavored to render this doubtful, at least with respect to composition.
My beginning at Paris, the ordeal through which I had several times
passed there, both at the house of M. Dupin and that of M. de la
Popliniere; the quantity of music I had composed during fourteen years in
the midst of the most celebrated masters and before their eyes:--finally,
the opera of the 'Muses Gallantes', and that even of the 'Devin'; a motet
I had composed for Mademoiselle Fel, and which she had sung at the
spiritual concert; the frequent conferences I had had upon this fine art
with the first composers, all seemed to prevent or dissipate a doubt of
such a nature. This however existed even at the Chevrette, and in the
mind of M. d'Epinay himself. Without appearing to observe it, I
undertook to compose him a motet for the dedication of the chapel of the
Chevrette, and I begged him to make choice of the words. He directed de
Linant, the tutor to his son, to furnish me with these. De Linant gave
me words proper to the subject, and in a week after I had received them
the motet was finished. This time, spite was my Apollo, and never did
better music come from my hand. The words began with: 'Ecce sedes hic
tonantis'. (I have since learned these were by Santeuil, and that M. de
Linant had without scruple appropriated them to himself.) The grandeur of
the opening is suitable to the words, and the rest of the motet is so
elegantly harmonious that everyone was struck with it. I had composed it
for a great orchestra. D'Epinay procured the best performers. Madam
Bruna, an Italian singer, sung the motet, and was well accompanied. The
composition succeeded so well that it was afterwards performed at the
spiritual concert, where, in spite of secret cabals, and notwithstanding
it was badly executed, it was twice generally applauded. I gave for the
birthday of M. d'Epinay the idea of a kind of piece half dramatic and
half pantomimical, of which I also composed the music. Grimm, on his
arrival, heard speak of my musical success. An hour afterwards not a
word more was said on the subject; but there no longer remained a doubt,
not at least that I know of, of my knowledge of composition.

Grimm was scarcely arrived at the Chevrette, where I already did not much
amuse myself, before he made it insupportable to me by airs I never
before saw in any person, and of which I had no idea. The evening before
he came, I was dislodged from the chamber of favor, contiguous to that of
Madam d'Epinay; it was prepared for Grimm, and instead of it, I was put
into another further off. "In this manner," said I, laughingly, to Madam
d'Epinay, "new-comers displace those which are established." She seemed
embarrassed. I was better acquainted the same evening with the reason
for the change, in learning that between her chamber and that I had
quitted there was a private door which she had thought needless to show
me. Her intercourse with Grimm was not a secret either in her own house
or to the public, not even to her husband; yet, far from confessing it to
me, the confidant of secrets more important to her, and which was sure
would be faithfully kept, she constantly denied it in the strongest
manner. I comprehended this reserve proceeded from Grimm, who, though
intrusted with all my secrets, did not choose I should be with any of
his.

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