The singularity of his paradox had worn off; Rousseau no longer astounded, he shocked the good sense as well as the aspirations, superficial or generous, of the eighteenth century.  The Discours sur l’Inegalite des conditions was not a success.  “I have received, sir, your new book against the human race,” wrote Voltaire; “I thank you for it.  You will please men to whom you tell truths about them, and you will not make them any better.  Never was so much good wit expended in the desire to make beasts of us; one feels disposed to walk on all fours when one reads your work.  However, as it is more than sixty years since I lost the knack, I unfortunately find it impossible to recover it, and I leave that natural gait to those who are better fitted for it than you or I. No more can I embark upon a visit to the savages of Canada, first, because the illnesses to which I am subject render a European doctor necessary to me; secondly, because war has been introduced into that country, and because the examples of our nations have rendered the savages almost as wicked as ourselves.  I shall confine myself to being a peaceable savage in the solitude I have selected hard by your own country, where you ought to be.”

Rousseau had, indeed, thought of returning and settling at Geneva.  In 1754, during a trip he made thither, he renounced the Catholic faith which he had embraced at sixteen under the influence of Madame de Warens, without any more conviction than he carried with him in his fresh abjuration.  “Ashamed,” says he, “at being excluded from my rights of citizenship by the profession of a cult other than that of my fathers, I resolved to resume the latter openly.  I considered that the Gospel was the same for all Christians, and that, as the fundamental difference of dogma arose from meddling with explanations of what could not be understood, it appertained in every country to the sovereigns alone to fix both the cult and the unintelligible dogma, and that, consequently, it was the duty of the citizen to accept the dogma and follow the cult prescribed by law.”  Strange eccentricity of the human mind!  The shackles of civilization are oppressive to Rousseau, and yet he would impose the yoke of the state upon consciences.  The natural man does not reflect, and does not discuss his religion; whilst seeking to recover the obliterated ideal of nature, the philosopher halts on the road at the principles of Louis XIV. touching religious liberties.

[Illustration:  Rousseau and Madame D’Epinay——­338]

Madame d’Epinay had offered Rousseau a retreat in her little house, the Hermitage.  There it was that he began the tale of La Nouvelle Heloise, which was finished at Marshal de Montmorency’s, when the susceptible and cranky temper of the philosopher had justified the malevolent predictions of Grimm.  The latter had but lately said to Madame d’Epinay “I see in Rousseau nothing but pride concealed everywhere about him; you will do him a very sorry