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

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




However prejudiced I was in favor of this man by former sentiments, which
were not extinguished, and by the real merit he had, all was not proof
against the cares he took to destroy it. He received me like the Comte
de Tuffiere; he scarcely deigned to return my salute; he never once spoke
to me, and prevented my speaking to him by not making me any answer; he
everywhere passed first, and took the first place without ever paying me
the least attention. All this would have been supportable had he not
accompanied it with a shocking affectation, which may be judged of by one
example taken from a hundred. One evening Madam d'Epinay, finding
herself a little indisposed, ordered something for her supper to be
carried into her chamber, and went up stairs to sup by the side of the
fire. She asked me to go with her, which I did. Grimm came afterwards.
The little table was already placed, and there were but two covers.
Supper was served; Madam d' Epinay took her place on one side of the
fire, Grimm took an armed chair, seated himself at the other, drew the
little table between them, opened his napkin, and prepared himself for
eating without speaking to me a single word.

Madam d' Epinay blushed at his behavior, and, to induce him to repair his
rudeness, offered me her place. He said nothing, nor did he ever look at
me. Not being able to approach the fire, I walked about the chamber
until a cover was brought. Indisposed as I was, older than himself,
longer acquainted in the house than he had been, the person who had
introduced him there, and to whom as a favorite of the lady he ought to
have done the honors of it, he suffered me to sup at the end of the
table, at a distance from the fire, without showing me the least
civility. His whole behavior to me corresponded with this example of it.
He did not treat me precisely as his inferior, but he looked upon me as a
cipher. I could scarcely recognize the same Grimm, who, to the house of
the Prince de Saxe-Gotha, thought himself honored when I cast my eyes
upon him. I had still more difficulty in reconciling this profound
silence and insulting haughtiness with the tender friendship he possessed
for me to those whom he knew to be real friends. It is true the only
proofs he gave of it was pitying my wretched fortune, of which I did not
complain; compassionating my sad fate, with which I was satisfied; and
lamenting to see me obstinately refuse the benevolent services he said,
he wished to render me. Thus was it he artfully made the world admire
his affectionate generosity, blame my ungrateful misanthropy, and
insensibly accustomed people to imagine there was nothing more between a
protector like him and a wretch like myself, than a connection founded
upon benefactions on one part and obligations on the other, without once
thinking of a friendship between equals. For my part, I have vainly
sought to discover in what I was under an obligation to this new
protector. I had lent him money, he had never lent me any; I had
attended him in his illness, he scarcely came to see me in mine; I had
given him all my friends, he never had given me any of his; I had said
everything I could in his favor, and if ever he has spoken of me it has
been less publicly and in another manner. He has never either rendered
or offered me the least service of any kind. How, therefore, was he my
Mecaenas? In what manner was I protected by him? This was
incomprehensible to me, and still remains so.

It is true, he was more or less arrogant with everybody, but I was the
only person with whom he was brutally so. I remember Saint Lambert once
ready to throw a plate at his head, upon his, in some measure, giving him
the lie at table by vulgarly saying, "That is not true." With his
naturally imperious manner he had the self-sufficiency of an upstart,
and became ridiculous by being extravagantly impertinent. An intercourse
with the great had so far intoxicated him that he gave himself airs which
none but the contemptible part of them ever assume. He never called his
lackey but by "Eh!" as if amongst the number of his servants my lord had
not known which was in waiting. When he sent him to buy anything,
he threw the money upon the ground instead of putting it into his hand.
In short, entirely forgetting he was a man, he treated him with such
shocking contempt, and so cruel a disdain in everything, that the poor
lad, a very good creature, whom Madam d'Epinay had recommended, quitted
his service without any other complaint than that of the impossibility of
enduring such treatment. This was the la Fleur of this new presuming
upstart.

As these things were nothing more than ridiculous, but quite opposite to
my character, they contributed to render him suspicious to me. I could
easily imagine that a man whose head was so much deranged could not have
a heart well placed. He piqued himself upon nothing so much as upon
sentiments. How could this agree with defects which are peculiar to
little minds? How can the continued overflowings of a susceptible heart
suffer it to be incessantly employed in so many little cares relative to
the person? He who feels his heart inflamed with this celestial fire
strives to diffuse it, and wishes to show what he internally is. He
would wish to place his heart in his countenance, and thinks not of other
paint for his cheeks.

I remember the summary of his morality which Madam d'Epinay had mentioned
to me and adopted. This consisted in one single article; that the sole
duty of man is to follow all the inclinations of his heart. This
morality, when I heard it mentioned, gave me great matter of reflection,
although I at first considered it solely as a play of wit. But I soon
perceived it was a principle really the rule of his conduct, and of which
I afterwards had, at my own expense, but too many convincing proofs.
It is the interior doctrine Diderot has so frequently intimated to me,
but which I never heard him explain.

I remember having several years before been frequently told that Grimm
was false, that he had nothing more than the appearance of sentiment,
and particularly that he did not love me. I recollected several little
anecdotes which I had heard of him by M. de Francueil and Madam de
Chenonceaux, neither of whom esteemed him, and to whom he must have been
known, as Madam de Chenonceaux was daughter to Madam de Rochechouart,
the intimate friend of the late Comte de Friese, and that M. de
Francueil, at that time very intimate with the Viscount de Polignac,
had lived a good deal at the Palais Royal precisely when Grimm began to
introduce himself there. All Paris heard of his despair after the death
of the Comte de Friese. It was necessary to support the reputation he
had acquired after the rigors of Mademoiselle Fel, and of which I, more
than any other person, should have seen the imposture, had I been less
blind. He was obliged to be dragged to the Hotel de Castries where he
worthily played his part, abandoned to the most mortal affliction.
There, he every morning went into the garden to weep at his ease, holding
before his eyes his handkerchief moistened with tears, as long as he was
in sight of the hotel, but at the turning of a certain alley, people, of
whom he little thought, saw him instantly put his handkerchief in his
pocket and take out of it a book. This observation, which was repeatedly
made, soon became public in Paris, and was almost as soon forgotten.
I myself had forgotten it; a circumstance in which I was concerned
brought it to my recollection. I was at the point of death in my bed,
in the Rue de Grenelle, Grimm was in the country; he came one morning,
quite out of breath, to see me, saying, he had arrived in town that very
instant; and a moment afterwards I learned he had arrived the evening
before, and had been seen at the theatre.

I heard many things of the same kind; but an observation, which I was
surprised not to have made sooner, struck me more than anything else.
I had given to Grimm all my friends without exception, they were become
his. I was so inseparable from him, that I should have had some
difficulty in continuing to visit at a house where he was not received.
Madam de Crequi was the only person who refused to admit him into her
company, and whom for that reason I have seldom since seen. Grimm on his
part made himself other friends, as well by his own means, as by those of
the Comte de Friese. Of all these not one of them ever became my friend:
he never said a word to induce me even to become acquainted with them,
and not one of those I sometimes met at his apartments ever showed me the
least good will; the Comte de Friese, in whose house he lived, and with
whom it consequently would have been agreeable to me to form some
connection, not excepted, nor the Comte de Schomberg, his relation, with
whom Grimm was still more intimate.

Add to this, my own friends, whom I made his, and who were all tenderly
attached to me before this acquaintance, were no longer so the moment it
was made. He never gave me one of his. I gave him all mine, and these
he has taken from me. If these be the effects of friendship, what are
those of enmity?

Diderot himself told me several times at the beginning that Grimm in whom
I had so much confidence, was not my friend. He changed his language the
moment he was no longer so himself.

The manner in which I had disposed of my children wanted not the
concurrence of any person. Yet I informed some of my friends of it,
solely to make it known to them, and that I might not in their eyes
appear better than I was. These friends were three in number: Diderot,
Grimm, and Madam d'Epinay. Duclos, the most worthy of my confidence, was
the only real friend whom I did not inform of it. He nevertheless knew
what I had done. By whom? This I know not. It is not very probable the
perfidy came from Madam d'Epinay, who knew that by following her example,
had I been capable of doing it, I had in my power the means of a cruel
revenge. It remains therefore between Grimm and Diderot, then so much
united, especially against me, and it is probable this crime was common
to them both. I would lay a wager that Duclos, to whom I never told my
secret, and who consequently was at liberty to make what use he pleased
of his information, is the only person who has not spoken of it again.

Grimm and Diderot, in their project to take from me the governesses, had
used the greatest efforts to make Duclos enter into their views; but this
he refused to do with disdain. It was not until sometime afterwards that
I learned from him what had passed between them on the subject; but I
learned at the time from Theresa enough to perceive there was some secret
design, and that they wished to dispose of me, if not against my own
consent, at least without my knowledge, or had an intention of making
these two persons serve as instruments of some project they had in view.
This was far from upright conduct. The opposition of Duclos is a
convincing proof of it. They who think proper may believe it to be
friendship.

This pretended friendship was as fatal to me at home as it was abroad.
The long and frequent conversations with Madam le Vasseur, for, several
years past, had made a sensible change in this woman's behavior to me,
and the change was far from being in my favor. What was the subject of
these singular conversations? Why such a profound mystery? Was the
conversation of that old woman agreeable enough to take her into favor,
and of sufficient importance to make of it so great a secret? During the
two or three years these colloquies had, from time to time, been
continued, they had appeared to me ridiculous; but when I thought of them
again, they began to astonish me. This astonishment would have been
carried to inquietude had I then known what the old creature was
preparing for me.

Notwithstanding the pretended zeal for my welfare of which Grimm made
such a public boast, difficult to reconcile with the airs he gave himself
when we were together, I heard nothing of him from any quarter the least
to my advantage, and his feigned commiseration tended less to do me
service than to render me contemptible. He deprived me as much as he
possibly could of the resource I found in the employment I had chosen,
by decrying me as a bad copyist. I confess he spoke the truth; but in
this case it was not for him to do it. He proved himself in earnest by
employing another copyist, and prevailing upon everybody he could, by
whom I was engaged, to do the same. His intention might have been
supposed to be that of reducing me to a dependence upon him and his
credit for a subsistence, and to cut off the latter until I was brought
to that degree of distress.

All things considered, my reason imposed silence upon my former
prejudice, which still pleaded in his favor. I judged his character to
be at least suspicious, and with respect to his friendship I positively
decided it to be false. I then resolved to see him no more, and informed
Madam d'Epinay of the resolution I had taken, supporting, it with several
unanswerable facts, but which I have now forgotten.

She strongly combated my resolution without knowing how to reply to the
reasons on which it was founded. She had not concerted with him; but the
next day, instead of explaining herself verbally, she, with great
address, gave me a letter they had drawn up together, and by which,
without entering into a detail of facts, she justified him by his
concentrated character, attributed to me as a crime my having suspected
him of perfidy towards his friend, and exhorted me to come to an
accommodation with him. This letter staggered me. In a conversation we
afterwards had together, and in which I found her better prepared than
she had been the first time, I suffered myself to be quite prevailed
upon, and was inclined to believe I might have judged erroneously. In
this case I thought I really had done a friend a very serious injury,
which it was my duty to repair. In short, as I had already done several
times with Diderot, and the Baron d'Holbach, half from inclination, and
half from weakness, I made all the advances I had a right to require;
I went to M. Grimm, like another George Dandin, to make him my apologies
for the offence he had given me; still in the false persuasion, which, in
the course of my life has made me guilty of a thousand meannesses to my
pretended friends, that there is no hatred which may not be disarmed by
mildness and proper behavior; whereas, on the contrary, the hatred of the
wicked becomes still more envenomed by the impossibility of finding
anything to found it upon, and the sentiment of their own injustice is
another cause of offence against the person who is the object of it.
I have, without going further than my own history, a strong proof of this
maxim in Grimm, and in Tronchin; both became my implacable enemies from
inclination, pleasure and fancy, without having been able to charge me
with having done either of them the most trifling injury, and whose
rage, like that of tigers, becomes daily more fierce by the facility of
satiating it.

[I did not give the surname of Jongleur only to the latter until a
long time after his enmity had been declared, and the persecutions
he brought upon me at Geneva and elsewhere. I soon suppressed the
name the moment I perceived I was entirely his victim. Mean
vengeance is unworthy of my heart, and hatred never takes the least
root in it.]

I expected that Grimm, confused by my condescension and advances, would
receive me with open arms, and the most tender friendship. He received
me as a Roman Emperor would have done, and with a haughtiness I never saw
in any person but himself. I was by no means prepared for such a
reception. When, in the embarrassment of the part I had to act, and
which was so unworthy of me, I had, in a few words and with a timid air,
fulfilled the object which had brought me to him; before he received me
into favor, he pronounced, with a deal of majesty, an harangue he had
prepared, and which contained a long enumeration of his rare virtues,
and especially those connected with friendship. He laid great stress
upon a thing which at first struck me a great deal: this was his having
always preserved the same friends. Whilst he was yet speaking, I said to
myself, it would be cruel for me to be the only exception to this rule.
He returned to the subject so frequently, and with such emphasis, that I
thought, if in this he followed nothing but the sentiments of his heart,
he would be less struck with the maxim, and that he made of it an art
useful to his views by procuring the means of accomplishing them. Until
then I had been in the same situation; I had preserved all my first
friends, those even from my tenderest infancy, without having lost one of
them except by death, and yet I had never before made the reflection: it
was not a maxim I had prescribed myself. Since, therefore, the advantage
was common to both, why did he boast of it in preference, if he had not
previously intended to deprive me of the merit? He afterwards endeavored
to humble me by proofs of the preference our common friends gave to me.
With this I was as well acquainted as himself; the question was, by what
means he had obtained it? whether it was by merit or address? by exalting
himself, or endeavoring to abase me? At last, when he had placed between
us all the distance that he could add to the value of the favor he was
about to confer, he granted me the kiss of peace, in a slight embrace
which resembled the accolade which the king gives to newmade knights.
I was stupefied with surprise: I knew not what to say; not a word could
I utter. The whole scene had the appearance of the reprimand a preceptor
gives to his pupil while he graciously spares inflicting the rod.
I never think of it without perceiving to what degree judgments, founded
upon appearances to which the vulgar give so much weight, are deceitful,
and how frequently audaciousness and pride are found in the guilty, and
shame and embarrassment in the innocent.

We were reconciled: this was a relief to my heart, which every kind of
quarrel fills with anguish. It will naturally be supposed that a like
reconciliation changed nothing in his manners; all it effected was to
deprive me of the right of complaining of them. For this reason I took a
resolution to endure everything, and for the future to say not a word.

So many successive vexations overwhelmed me to such a degree as to leave
me but little power over my mind. Receiving no answer from Saint
Lambert, neglected by Madam d'Houdetot, and no longer daring to open my
heart to any person, I began to be afraid that by making friendship my
idol, I should sacrifice my whole life to chimeras. After putting all
those with whom I had been acquainted to the test, there remained but two
who had preserved my esteem, and in whom my heart could confide: Duclos,
of whom since my retreat to the Hermitage I had lost sight, and Saint
Lambert. I thought the only means of repairing the wrongs I had done the
latter, was to open myself to him without reserve, and I resolved to
confess to him everything by which his mistress should not be exposed.
I have no doubt but this was another snare of my passions to keep me
nearer to her person; but I should certainly have had no reserve with her
lover, entirely submitting to his direction, and carrying sincerity as
far as it was possible to do it. I was upon the point of writing to him
a second letter, to which I was certain he would have returned an answer,
when I learned the melancholy cause of his silence relative to the first.
He had been unable to support until the end the fatigues of the campaign.
Madam d'Epinay informed me he had had an attack of the palsy, and Madam
d'Houdetot, ill from affliction, wrote me two or three days after from
Paris, that he was going to Aix-la-Chapelle to take the benefit of the
waters. I will not say this melancholy circumstance afflicted me as it
did her; but I am of opinion my grief of heart was as painful as her
tears. The pain of knowing him to be in such a state, increased by the
fear least inquietude should have contributed to occasion it, affected me
more than anything that had yet happened, and I felt most cruelly a want
of fortitude, which in my estimation was necessary to enable me to
support so many misfortunes. Happily this generous friend did not long
leave me so overwhelmed with affliction; he did not forget me,
notwithstanding his attack; and I soon learned from himself that I had
ill judged his sentiments, and been too much alarmed for his situation.
It is now time I should come to the grand revolution of my destiny, to
the catastrophe which has divided my life in two parts so different from
each other, and, from a very trifling cause, produced such terrible
effects.

One day, little thinking of what was to happen, Madam d'Epinay sent for
me to the Chevrette. The moment I saw her I perceived in her eyes and
whole countenance an appearance of uneasiness, which struck me the more,
as this was not customary, nobody knowing better than she did how to
govern her features and her movements. "My friend," said she to me,
"I am immediately going to set off for Geneva; my breast is in a bad
state, and my health so deranged that I must go and consult Tronchin."
I was the more astonished at this resolution so suddenly taken, and at
the beginning of the bad season of the year, as thirty-six hours before
she had not, when I left her, so much as thought of it. I asked her who
she would take with her. She said her son and M. de Linant; and
afterwards carelessly added, "And you, dear, will not you go also?" As I
did not think she spoke seriously, knowing that at the season of the year
I was scarcely in a situation to go to my chamber, I joked upon the
utility of the company, of one sick person to another. She herself had
not seemed to make the proposition seriously, and here the matter
dropped. The rest of our conversation ran upon the necessary
preparations for her journey, about which she immediately gave orders,
being determined to set off within a fortnight. She lost nothing by my
refusal, having prevailed upon her husband to accompany her.

A few days afterwards I received from Diderot the note I am going to
transcribe. This note, simply doubled up, so that the contents were
easily read, was addressed to me at Madam d'Epinay's, and sent to M. de
Linant, tutor to the son, and confidant to the mother.


NOTE FROM DIDEROT.

"I am naturally disposed to love you, and am born to give you trouble. I
am informed Madam d'Epinay is going to Geneva, and do not hear you are to
accompany her. My friend, you are satisfied with Madam d'Epinay, you
must go, with her; if dissatisfied you ought still less to hesitate. Do
you find the weight of the obligations you are under to her uneasy to
you? This is an opportunity of discharging a part of them, and relieving
your mind. Do you ever expect another opportunity like the present one,
of giving her proofs of your gratitude? She is going to a country where
she will be quite a stranger. She is ill, and will stand in need of
amusement and dissipation. The winter season too! Consider, my friend.
Your ill state of health may be a much greater objection than I think it
is; but are you now more indisposed than you were a month ago, or than
you will be at the beginning of spring? Will you three months hence be
in a situation to perform the journey more at your ease than at present?
For my part I cannot but observe to you that were I unable to bear the
shaking of the carriage I would take my staff and follow her. Have you
no fears lest your conduct should be misinterpreted? You will be
suspected of ingratitude or of a secret motive. I well know, that let
you do as you will you will have in your favor the testimony of your
conscience, but will this alone be sufficient, and is it permitted to
neglect to a certain degree that which is necessary to acquire the
approbation of others? What I now write, my good friend, is to acquit
myself of what I think I owe to us both. Should my letter displease you,
throw it into the fire and let it be forgotten. I salute, love and
embrace you."

Although trembling and almost blind with rage whilst I read this epistle,
I remarked the address with which Diderot affected a milder and more
polite language than he had done in his former ones, wherein he never
went further than "My dear," without ever deigning to add the name of
friend. I easily discovered the secondhand means by which the letter was
conveyed to me; the subscription, manner and form awkwardly betrayed the
manoeuvre; for we commonly wrote to each other by post, or the messenger
of Montmorency, and this was the first and only time he sent me his
letter by any other conveyance.

As soon as the first transports of my indignation permitted me to write,
I, with great precipitation, wrote him the following answer, which I
immediately carried from the Hermitage, where I then was, to Chevrette,
to show it to Madam d' Epinay; to whom, in my blind rage, I read the
contents, as well as the letter from Diderot.

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