The life which Rousseau lived at the Hermitage—­reveries in the forest, luxurious dinners, and sentimental friendships—­led to a passionate love-affair with the Comtesse d’Houdetot, a sister-in-law of his patroness Madame d’Epinay,—­a woman not only married, but who had another lover besides.  The result, of course, was miserable,—­jealousies, piques, humiliations, misunderstandings, and the sundering of the ties of friendship, which led to the necessity of another retreat:  a real home the wretched man never had.  This was furnished, still in the vicinity of Montmorenci, by another aristocratic friend, the Marechal de Luxembourg, the fiscal agent of the Prince de Conde.  And nothing to me is stranger than that this wandering, morbid, irritable man, without birth or fortune, the father of the wildest revolutionary and democratic doctrines, and always hated both by the Court and the Church, should have found his friends and warmest admirers and patrons in the highest circles of social life.  It can be explained only by the singular fascination of his eloquence, and by the extreme stolidity of his worshippers in appreciating his doctrines, and the state of society to which his principles logically led.

In this second retreat Rousseau had the entree to the palace of the Duke of Luxembourg, where he read to the friends assembled at its banquets his new production, “Emile,”—­a singular treatise on education, not so faulty as his previous works, but still false in many of its principles, especially in regard to religion.  This book contained an admirable and powerful impulse away from artificiality and towards naturalness in education, which has exerted an immense influence for good; we shall revert to it later.

A few months before the publication of “Emile,” Rousseau had issued “The Social Contract,” the most revolutionary of all his works, subversive of all precedents in politics, government, and the organization of society, while also confounding Christianity with ecclesiasticism and attacking its influence in the social order.  All his works obtained a wide fame before publication by reason of his habit of reading them to enthusiastic and influential friends who made them known.

“The Social Contract,” however, dangerous as it was, did not when published arouse so much opposition as “Emile.”  The latter book, as we now see, contained much that was admirable; but its freedom and looseness in religious discussion called down the wrath of the clergy, excited the alarm of the government, and finally compelled the author to fly for his life to Switzerland.