my tastes, my inclinations, my ways of living, everything that concerned myself only; revolted at seeing a younger man than myself insist with all his might on governing me like a child; chilled by his readiness in giving his promise and his negligence in keeping it; tired of so many appointments which he made and broke, and of his fancy for repairing them by new ones to be broken in their turn; provoked at waiting for him to no purpose three or four times a month on days which he had fixed, and of dining alone in the evening, after going on as far as St. Denis to meet him and waiting for him all day,—­I had my heart already full of a multitude of grievances."[293] This irritation subsided in presence of the storms that now rose up against Diderot.  He was in the thick of the dangerous and mortifying distractions stirred up by the foes of the Encyclopaedia.  Rousseau in friendly sympathy went to see him; they embraced, and old wrongs were forgotten until new arose.[294]

There is a less rose-coloured account than this.  Madame d’Epinay assigns two motives to Rousseau:  a desire to find an excuse for going to Paris, in order to avoid seeing Saint Lambert; secondly, a wish to hear Diderot’s opinion of the two first parts of the New Heloisa.  She says that he wanted to borrow a portfolio in which to carry the manuscripts to Paris; Rousseau says that they had already been in Diderot’s possession for six months.[295] As her letters containing this very circumstantial story were written at the moment, it is difficult to uphold the Confessions as valid authority against them.  Thirdly, Rousseau told her that he had not taken his manuscripts to Paris (p. 302), whereas Grimm writing a few days later (p. 309) mentions that he has received a letter from Diderot, to the effect that Rousseau’s visit had no other object than the revision of these manuscripts.  The scene is characteristic.  “Rousseau kept him pitilessly at work from Saturday at ten o’clock in the morning till eleven at night on Monday, hardly giving him time to eat and drink.  The revision at an end, Diderot chats with him about a plan he has in his head, and begs Rousseau to help him in contriving some incident which he cannot yet arrange to his taste.  ’It is too difficult,’ replies the hermit coldly, ’it is late, and I am not used to sitting up.  Good night; I am off at six in the morning, and ’tis time for bed.’  He rises from his chair, goes to bed, and leaves Diderot petrified at his behaviour.  The day of his departure, Diderot’s wife saw that her husband was in bad spirits, and asked the reason.  ’It is that man’s want of delicacy,’ he replied, ’which afflicts me; he makes me work like a slave, but I should never have found that out, if he had not so drily refused to take an interest in me for a quarter of an hour.’  ‘You are surprised at that,’ his wife answered; ’do you not know him?  He is devoured with envy; he goes wild with rage when anything fine appears that is not his own.  You will see him one day commit some great crime rather than let himself be ignored.  I declare I would not swear that he will not join the ranks of the Jesuits, and undertake their vindication.’”