and he confronted society with eyes of angry chagrin.  A great lady asked him how it was that she had not seen him for an age.  “Because when I wish to see you, I wish to see no one but you.  What do you want me to do in the midst of your society?  I should cut a sorry figure in a circle of mincing tripping coxcombs; they do not suit me.”  We cannot wonder that on some occasion when her son’s proficiency was to be tested before a company of friends, Madame d’Epinay prayed Rousseau to be of them, on the ground that he would be sure to ask the child outrageously absurd questions, which would give gaiety to the affair.[219] As it happened, the father was unwise.  He was a man of whom it was said that he had devoured two million francs, without either saying or doing a single good thing.  He rewarded the child’s performance with the gift of a superb suit of cherry-coloured velvet, extravagantly trimmed with costly lace; the peasant from whose sweat and travail the money had been wrung, went in heavy rags, and his children lived as the beasts of the field.  The poor youth was ill dealt with.  “That is very fine,” said rude Duclos, “but remember that a fool in lace is still a fool.”  Rousseau, in reply to the child’s importunity, was still blunter:  “Sir, I am no judge of finery, I am only a judge of man; I wished to talk with you a little while ago, but I wish so no longer."[220]

Marmontel, whose account may have been coloured by retrospection in later years, says that before the success of the first Discourse, Rousseau concealed his pride under the external forms of a politeness that was timid even to obsequiousness; in his uneasy glance you perceived mistrust and observant jealousy; there was no freedom in his manner, and no one ever observed more cautiously the hateful precept to live with your friends as though they were one day to be your enemies.[221] Grimm’s description is different and more trustworthy.  Until he began to affect singularity, he says, Rousseau had been gallant and overflowing with artificial compliment, with manners that were honeyed and even wearisome in their soft elaborateness.  All at once he put on the cynic’s cloak, and went to the other extreme.  Still in spite of an abrupt and cynical tone he kept much of his old art of elaborate fine speeches, and particularly in his relations with women.[222] Of his abruptness, he tells a most displeasing tale.  “One day Rousseau told us with an air of triumph, that as he was coming out of the opera where he had been seeing the first representation of the Village Soothsayer, the Duke of Zweibruecken had approached him with much politeness, saying, ‘Will you allow me to pay you a compliment?’ and that he replied, ’Yes, if it be very short.’  Everybody was silent at this, until I said to him laughingly, ’Illustrious citizen and co-sovereign of Geneva, since there resides in you a part of the sovereignty of the republic, let me represent to you that, for all the severity of your principles, you should hardly refuse to a sovereign prince the respect due to a water-carrier, and that if you had met a word of good-will from a water-carrier with an answer as rough and brutal as that, you would have had to reproach yourself with a most unseasonable piece of impertinence.’"[223]