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

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




Courage under misfortune irritates the hearts of cowards, but it is
pleasing to generous minds. This note seemed to make Saint Lambert
reflect with himself and to regret his having been so violent; but too
haughty in his turn to make open advances, he seized and perhaps
prepared, the opportunity of palliating what he had done.

A fortnight afterwards I received from Madam d'Epinay the following
letter:

Thursday, 26th.

"SIR: I received the book you had the goodness to send me, and which I
have read with much pleasure. I have always experienced the same
sentiment in reading all the works which have come from your pen.
Receive my thanks for the whole. I should have returned you these in
person had my affairs permitted me to remain any time in your
neighborhood; but I was not this year long at the Chevrette. M. and
Madam Dupin come there on Sunday to dinner. I expect M. de Saint
Lambert, M. de Francueil, and Madam d'Houdetot will be of the party;
you will do me much pleasure by making one also. All the persons who are
to dine with me, desire, and will, as well as myself, be delighted to
pass with you a part of the day. I have the honor to be with the most
perfect consideration," etc.

This letter made my heart beat violently; after having for a year past
been the subject of conversation of all Paris, the idea of presenting
myself as a spectacle before Madam d'Houdetot, made me tremble, and I had
much difficulty to find sufficient courage to support that ceremony.
Yet as she and Saint Lambert were desirous of it, and Madam d'Epinay
spoke in the name of her guests without naming one whom I should not be
glad to see, I did not think I should expose myself accepting a dinner to
which I was in some degree invited by all the persons who with myself
were to partake of it. I therefore promised to go: on Sunday the weather
was bad, and Madam D'Epinay sent me her carriage.

My arrival caused a sensation. I never met a better reception. An
observer would have thought the whole company felt how much I stood in
need of encouragement. None but French hearts are susceptible of this
kind of delicacy. However, I found more people than I expected to see.
Amongst others the Comte d' Houdetot, whom I did not know, and his sister
Madam de Blainville, without whose company I should have been as well
pleased. She had the year before came several times to Eaubonne, and her
sister-in-law had left her in our solitary walks to wait until she
thought proper to suffer her to join us. She had harbored a resentment
against me, which during this dinner she gratified at her ease. The
presence of the Comte d' Houdetot and Saint Lambert did not give me the
laugh on my side, and it may be judged that a man embarrassed in the most
common conversations was not very brilliant in that which then took
place. I never suffered so much, appeared so awkward, or received more
unexpected mortifications. As soon as we had risen from table, I
withdrew from that wicked woman; I had the pleasure of seeing Saint
Lambert and Madam de'Houdetot approach me, and we conversed together a
part of the afternoon, upon things very indifferent it is true, but with
the same familiarity as before my involuntary error. This friendly
attention was not lost upon my heart, and could Saint Lambert have read
what passed there, he certainly would have been satisfied with it. I can
safely assert that although on my arrival the presence of Madam
d'Houdetot gave me the most violent palpitations, on returning from the
house I scarcely thought of her; my mind was entirely taken up with Saint
Lambert.

Notwithstanding the malignant sarcasms of Madam de Blainville, the dinner
was of great service to me, and I congratulated myself upon not having
refused the invitation. I not only discovered that the intrigues of
Grimm and the Holbachiens had not deprived me of my old acquaintance,
but, what flattered me still more, that Madam d'Houdetot and Saint
Lambert were less changed than I had imagined, and I at length understood
that his keeping her at a distance from me proceeded more from jealousy
than from disesteem.

[Such is the simplicity of my heart was my opinion when I wrote
these confessions.]

This was a consolation to me, and calmed my mind. Certain of not being
an object of contempt in the eyes of persons whom I esteemed, I worked
upon my own heart with greater courage and success. If I did not quite
extinguish in it a guilty and an unhappy passion, I at least so well
regulated the remains of it that they have never since that moment led
me into the most trifling error. The copies of Madam d' Houdetot, which
she prevailed upon me to take again, and my works, which I continued to
send her as soon as they appeared, produced me from her a few notes and
messages, indifferent but obliging. She did still more, as will
hereafter appear, and the reciprocal conduct of her lover and myself,
after our intercourse had ceased, may serve as an example of the manner
in which persons of honor separate when it is no longer agreeable to
them to associate with each other.

Another advantage this dinner procured me was its being spoken of in
Paris, where it served as a refutation of the rumor spread by my enemies,
that I had quarrelled with every person who partook of it, and especially
with M. d'Epinay. When I left the Hermitage I had written him a very
polite letter of thanks, to which he answered not less politely, and
mutual civilities had continued, as well between us as between me and M.
de la Lalive, his brother-in-law, who even came to see me at Montmorency,
and sent me some of his engravings. Excepting the two sisters-in-law of
Madam d'Houdetot, I have never been on bad terms with any person of the
family.

My letter to D'Alembert had great success. All my works had been very
well received, but this was more favorable to me. It taught the public
to guard against the insinuations of the Coterie Holbachique. When I
went to the Hermitage, this Coterie predicted with its usual sufficiency,
that I should not remain there three months. When I had stayed there
twenty months, and was obliged to leave it, I still fixed my residence in
the country. The Coterie insisted this was from a motive of pure
obstinacy, and that I was weary even to death of my retirement; but that,
eaten up with pride, I chose rather to become a victim of my stubbornness
than to recover from it and return to Paris. The letter to D'Alembert
breathed a gentleness of mind which every one perceived not to be
affected. Had I been dissatisfied with my retreat, my style and manner
would have borne evident marks of my ill-humor. This reigned in all the
works I had written in Paris; but in the first I wrote in the country not
the least appearance of it was to be found. To persons who knew how to
distinguish, this remark was decisive. They perceived I was returned to
my element.

Yet the same work, notwithstanding all the mildness it breathed, made me
by a mistake of my own and my usual ill-luck, another enemy amongst men
of letters. I had become acquainted with Marmontel at the house of M. de
la Popliniere, and his acquaintance had been continued at that of the
baron. Marmontel at that time wrote the 'Mercure de France'. As I had
too much pride to send my works to the authors of periodical
publications, and wishing to send him this without his imagining it was
in consequence of that title, or being desirous he should speak of it in
the Mercure, I wrote upon the book that it was not for the author of the
Mercure, but for M. Marmontel. I thought I paid him a fine compliment;
he mistook it for a cruel offence, and became my irreconcilable enemy.
He wrote against the letter with politeness, it is true, but with a
bitterness easily perceptible, and since that time has never lost an
opportunity of injuring me in society, and of indirectly ill-treating me
in his works. Such difficulty is there in managing the irritable
self-love of men of letters, and so careful ought every person to be
not to leave anything equivocal in the compliments they pay them.

Having nothing more to disturb me, I took advantage of my leisure and
independence to continue my literary pursuits with more coherence. I
this winter finished my Eloisa, and sent it to Rey, who had it printed
the year following. I was, however, interrupted in my projects by a
circumstance sufficiently disagreeable. I heard new preparations were
making at the opera-house to give the 'Devin du Village'. Enraged at
seeing these people arrogantly dispose of my property, I again took up
the memoir I had sent to M. D'Argenson, to which no answer had been
returned, and having made some trifling alterations in it, I sent the
manuscript by M. Sellon, resident from Geneva, and a letter with which he
was pleased to charge himself, to the Comte de St. Florentin, who had
succeeded M. D'Argenson in the opera department. Duclos, to whom I
communicated what I had done, mentioned it to the 'petits violons', who
offered to restore me, not my opera, but my freedom of the theatre, which
I was no longer in a situation to enjoy. Perceiving I had not from any
quarter the least justice to expect, I gave up the affair; and the
directors of the opera, without either answering or listening to my
reasons, have continued to dispose as of their own property, and to turn
to their profit, the Devin du Village, which incontestably belong to
nobody but myself.

Since I had shaken off the yoke of my tyrants, I led a life sufficiently
agreeable and peaceful; deprived of the charm of too strong attachments
I was delivered from the weight of their chains. Disgusted with the
friends who pretended to be my protectors, and wished absolutely to
dispose of me at will, and in spite of myself, to subject me to their
pretended good services, I resolved in future to have no other
connections than those of simple benevolence. These, without the least
constraint upon liberty, constitute the pleasure of society, of which
equality is the basis. I had of them as many as were necessary to enable
me to taste of the charm of liberty without being subject to the
dependence of it; and as soon as I had made an experiment of this manner
of life, I felt it was the most proper to my age, to end my days in
peace, far removed from the agitations, quarrels and cavillings in which
I had just been half submerged.

During my residence at the Hermitage, and after my settlement at
Montmorency, I had made in the neighborhood some agreeable acquaintance,
and which did not subject me to any inconvenience. The principal of
these was young Loiseau de Mauleon, who, then beginning to plead at the
bar, did not yet know what rank he would one day hold there. I for my
part was not in the least doubt about the matter. I soon pointed out to
him the illustrious career in the midst of which he is now seen, and
predicted that, if he laid down to himself rigid rules for the choice of
causes, and never became the defender of anything but virtue and justice,
his genius, elevated by this sublime sentiment, would be equal to that of
the greatest orators. He followed my advice, and now feels the good
effects of it. His defence of M. de Portes is worthy of Demosthenes. He
came every year within a quarter of a league of the Hermitage to pass the
vacation at St. Brice, in the fife of Mauleon, belonging to his mother,
and where the great Bossuet had formerly lodged. This is a fief, of
which a like succession of proprietors would render nobility difficult to
support.

I had also for a neighbor in the same village of St. Brice, the
bookseller Guerin, a man of wit, learning, of an amiable disposition, and
one of the first in his profession. He brought me acquainted with Jean
Neaulme, bookseller of Amsterdam, his friend and correspondent, who
afterwards printed Emilius.

I had another acquaintance still nearer than St. Brice, this was M.
Maltor, vicar of Groslay, a man better adapted for the functions of a
statesman and a minister, than for those of the vicar of a village, and
to whom a diocese at least would have been given to govern if talents
decided the disposal of places. He had been secretary to the Comte de
Luc, and was formerly intimately acquainted with Jean Bapiste Rousseau.
Holding in as much esteem the memory of that illustrious exile, as he
held the villain who ruined him in horror; he possessed curious anecdotes
of both, which Segur had not inserted in the life, still in manuscript,
of the former, and he assured me that the Comte de Luc, far from ever
having had reason to complain of his conduct, had until his last moment
preserved for him the warmest friendship. M. Maltor, to whom M. de
Vintimille gave this retreat after the death of his patron, had formerly
been employed in many affairs of which, although far advanced in years,
he still preserved a distinct remembrance, and reasoned upon them
tolerably well. His conversation, equally amusing and instructive, had
nothing in it resembling that of a village pastor: he joined the manners
of a man of the world to the knowledge of one who passes his life in
study. He, of all my permanent neighbors, was the person whose society
was the most agreeable to me.

I was also acquainted at Montmorency with several fathers of the oratory,
and amongst others Father Berthier, professor of natural philosophy; to
whom, notwithstanding some little tincture of pedantry, I become attached
on account of a certain air of cordial good nature which I observed in
him. I had, however, some difficulty to reconcile this great simplicity
with the desire and the art he had of everywhere thrusting himself into
the company of the great, as well as that of the women, devotees, and
philosophers. He knew how to accommodate himself to every one. I was
greatly pleased with the man, and spoke of my satisfaction to all my
other acquaintances. Apparently what I said of him came to his ear. He
one day thanked me for having thought him a good-natured man. I observed
something in his forced smile which, in my eyes, totally changed his
physiognomy, and which has since frequently occurred to my mind. I
cannot better compare this smile than to that of Panurge purchasing the
Sheep of Dindenaut. Our acquaintance had begun a little time after my
arrival at the Hermitage, to which place he frequently came to see me. I
was already settled at Montmorency when he left it to go and reside at
Paris. He often saw Madam le Vasseur there. One day, when I least
expected anything of the kind, he wrote to me in behalf of that woman,
informing me that Grimm offered to maintain her, and to ask my permission
to accept the offer. This I understood consisted in a pension of three
hundred livres, and that Madam le Vasseur was to come and live at Deuil,
between the Chevrette and Montmorency. I will not say what impression
the application made on me. It would have been less surprising had Grimm
had ten thousand livres a year, or any relation more easy to comprehend
with that woman, and had not such a crime been made of my taking her to
the country, where, as if she had become younger, he was now pleased to
think of placing her. I perceived the good old lady had no other reason
for asking my permission, which she might easily have done without, but
the fear of losing what I already gave her, should I think ill of the
step she took. Although this charity appeared to be very extraordinary,
it did not strike me so much then as afterwards. But had I known even
everything I have since discovered, I should still as readily have given
my consent as I did and was obliged to do, unless I had exceeded the
offer of M. Grimm. Father Berthier afterwards cured me a little of my
opinion of his good nature and cordiality, with which I had so
unthinkingly charged him.

This same Father Berthier was acquainted with two men, who, for what
reason I know not, were to become so with me; there was but little
similarity between their taste and mine. They were the children of
Melchisedec, of whom neither the country nor the family was known, no
more than, in all probability, the real name. They were Jansenists, and
passed for priests in disguise, perhaps on account of their ridiculous
manner of wearing long swords, to which they appeared to have been
fastened. The prodigious mystery in all their proceedings gave them the
appearance of the heads of a party, and I never had the least doubt of
their being the authors of the 'Gazette Ecclesiastique'. The one, tall,
smooth-tongued, and sharping, was named Ferrand; the other, short, squat,
a sneerer, and punctilious, was a M. Minard. They called each other
cousin. They lodged at Paris with D'Alembert, in the house of his nurse
named Madam Rousseau, and had taken at Montmorency a little apartment to
pass the summers there. They did everything for themselves, and had
neither a servant nor runner; each had his turn weekly to purchase
provisions, do the business of the kitchen, and sweep the house. They
managed tolerably well, and we sometimes ate with each other. I know not
for what reason they gave themselves any concern about me: for my part,
my only motive for beginning an acquaintance with them was their playing
at chess, and to make a poor little party I suffered four hours' fatigue.
As they thrust themselves into all companies, and wished to intermeddle
in everything, Theresa called them the gossips, and by this name they
were long known at Montmorency.

Such, with my host M. Mathas, who was a good man, were my principal
country acquaintance. I still had a sufficient number at Paris to live
there agreeably whenever I chose it, out of the sphere of men of letters,
amongst whom Duclos, was the only friend I reckoned: for De Levre was
still too young, and although, after having been a witness to the
manoeuvres of the philosophical tribe against me, he had withdrawn from
it, at least I thought so, I could not yet forget the facility with which
he made himself the mouthpiece of all the people of that description.

In the first place I had my old and respectable friend Roguin. This was
a good old-fashioned friend for whom I was not indebted to my writings
but to myself, and whom for that reason I have always preserved. I had
the good Lenieps, my countryman, and his daughter, then alive, Madam
Lambert. I had a young Genevese, named Coindet, a good creature,
careful, officious, zealous, who came to see me soon after I had gone to
reside at the Hermitage, and, without any other introducer than himself,
had made his way into my good graces. He had a taste for drawing, and
was acquainted with artists. He was of service to me relative to the
engravings of the New Eloisa; he undertook the direction of the drawings
and the plates, and acquitted himself well of the commission.

I had free access to the house of M. Dupin, which, less brilliant than in
the young days of Madam Dupin, was still, by the merit of the heads of
the family, and the choice of company which assembled there, one of the
best houses in Paris. As I had not preferred anybody to them, and had
separated myself from their society to live free and independent, they
had always received me in a friendly manner, and I was always certain of
being well received by Madam Dupin. I might even have counted her
amongst my country neighbors after her establishment at Clichy, to which
place I sometimes went to pass a day or two, and where I should have been
more frequently had Madam Dupin and Madam de Chenonceaux been upon better
terms. But the difficulty of dividing my time in the same house between
two women whose manner of thinking was unfavorable to each other, made
this disagreeable: however I had the pleasure of seeing her more at my
ease at Deuil, where, at a trifling distance from me, she had taken a
small house, and even at my own habitation, where she often came to see
me.

I had likewise for a friend Madam de Crequi, who, having become devout,
no longer received D'Alembert, Marmontel, nor a single man of letters,
except, I believe the Abbe Trublet, half a hypocrite, of whom she was
weary. I, whose acquaintance she had sought lost neither her good wishes
nor intercourse. She sent me young fat pullets from Mons, and her
intention was to come and see me the year following had not a journey,
upon which Madam de Luxembourg determined, prevented her. I here owe her
a place apart; she will always hold a distinguished one in my
remembrance.

In this list I should also place a man whom, except Roguin, I ought to
have mentioned as the first upon it; my old friend and brother
politician, De Carrio, formerly titulary secretary to the embassy from
Spain to Venice, afterwards in Sweden, where he was charge des affaires,
and at length really secretary to the embassy from Spain at Paris. He
came and surprised me at Montmorency when I least expected him. He was
decorated with the insignia of a Spanish order, the name of which I have
forgotten, with a fine cross in jewelry. He had been obliged, in his
proofs of nobility, to add a letter to his name, and to bear that of the
Chevalier de Carrion. I found him still the same man, possessing the
same excellent heart, and his mind daily improving, and becoming more and
more amiable. We would have renewed our former intimacy had not Coindet
interposed according to custom, taken advantage of the distance I was at
from town to insinuate himself into my place, and, in my name, into his
confidence, and supplant me by the excess of his zeal to render me
services.

The remembrance of Carrion makes me recollect one of my country
neighbors, of whom I should be inexcusable not to speak, as I have to
make confession of an unpardonable neglect of which I was guilty towards
him: this was the honest M. le Blond, who had done me a service at
Venice, and, having made an excursion to France with his family, had
taken a house in the country, at Birche, not far from Montmorency.

[When I wrote this, full of my blind confidence, I was far from
suspecting the real motive and the effect of his journey to Paris.]

As soon as I heard he was my neighbor, I, in the joy of my heart, and
making it more a pleasure than a duty, went to pay him a visit. I set
off upon this errand the next day. I was met by people who were coming
to see me, and with whom I was obliged to return. Two days afterwards I
set off again for the same purpose: he had dined at Paris with all his
family. A third time he was at home: I heard the voice of women, and
saw, at the door, a coach which alarmed me. I wished to see him, at
least for the first time, quite at my ease, that we might talk over what
had passed during our former connection.

In fine, I so often postponed my visit from day to day, that the shame of
discharging a like duty so late prevented me from doing it at all; after
having dared to wait so long, I no longer dared to present myself. This
negligence, at which M. le Blond could not but be justly offended, gave,
relative to him, the appearance of ingratitude to my indolence, and yet I
felt my heart so little culpable that, had it been in my power to do M.
le Blond the least service, even unknown to himself, I am certain he
would not have found me idle. But indolence, negligence and delay in
little duties to be fulfilled have been more prejudicial to me than great
vices. My greatest faults have been omissions: I have seldom done what I
ought not to have done, and unfortunately it has still more rarely
happened that I have done what I ought.

Since I am now upon the subject of my Venetian acquaintance, I must not
forget one which I still preserved for a considerable time after my
intercourse with the rest had ceased. This was M. de Joinville, who
continued after his return from Genoa to show me much friendship. He was
fond of seeing me and of conversing with me upon the affairs of Italy,
and the follies of M. de Montaigu, of whom he of himself knew many
anecdotes, by means of his acquaintance in the office for foreign affairs
in which he was much connected. I had also the pleasure of seeing at my
house my old comrade Dupont who had purchased a place in the province of
which he was, and whose affairs had brought him to Paris. M. de
Joinville became by degrees so desirous of seeing me, that he in some
measure laid me under constraint; and, although our places of residence
were at a great distance from each other, we had a friendly quarrel when
I let a week pass without going to dine with him. When he went to
Joinville he was always desirous of my accompanying him; but having once
been there to pass a week I had not the least desire to return. M. de
Joinville was certainly an honest man, and even amiable in certain
respects but his understanding was beneath mediocrity; he was handsome,
rather fond of his person and tolerably fatiguing. He had one of the
most singular collections perhaps in the world, to which he gave much of
his attention and endeavored to acquire it that of his friends, to whom
it sometimes afforded less amusement than it did to himself. This was a
complete collection of songs of the court and Paris for upwards of fifty
years past, in which many anecdotes were to be found that would have been
sought for in vain elsewhere. These are memoirs for the history of
France, which would scarcely be thought of in any other country.

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