[261] P. 485.

[262] For a sympathetic account of the Abbe de Saint Pierre’s life and speculations, see M. Leonce de Lavergne’s Economistes francais du 18ieme siecle (Paris:  1870).  Also Comte’s Lettres a M. Valat, p. 73.

[263] Conf., ix. 270-274.

[264] Conf., ix. 289.

[265] Ib. ix. 286.

[266] D’Epinay, ii. 153.

[267] Madame d’Houdetot, (b. 1730—­d. 1813) was the daughter of M. de Bellegarde, the father of Madame d’Epinay’s husband.  Her marriage with the Count d’Houdetot, of high Norman stock, took place in 1748.  The circumstances of the marriage, which help to explain the lax view of the vows common among the great people of the time, are given with perhaps a shade too much dramatic colouring in Madame d’Epinay’s Mem., i 101.

[268] Conf., ix. 281.

[269] D’Epinay, ii. 246.

[270] D’Epinay, ii. 269.

[271] Musset-Pathay has collected two or three trifles of her composition, ii. 136-138.  Heal so quotes Madame d’Allard’s account of her, pp. 140, 141.

[272] Quoted by M. Girardin, Rev. des Deux Mondes, Sept. 1853, p. 1080.

[273] Conf., ix. 304.

[274] Ib. ix. 305.  Slightly modified version in Corr., i. 377.

[275] M. Boiteau’s note to Madame d’Epinay, ii. 273.

[276] Grimm, to Madame d’Epinay, ii. 305.

[277] This is shown partly by Saint Lambert’s letter to Rousseau, to which we come presently, and partly by a letter of Madame d’Houdetot to Rousseau in May, 1758 (Streckeisen-Moultou, i. 411-413), where she distinctly says that she concealed his mad passion for her from Saint Lambert, who first heard of it in common conversation.

[278] Conf., ix. 311.

[279] Besides the many hints of reference to this in the Confessions, see the phrenetic Letters to Sarah, printed in the Melanges, pp. 347-360.

[280] Conf., ix. 337.

[281] Corr., i. 398.  Sept. 4, 1757.

[282] To Madame d’Houdetot. Corr., i. 376-387.  June 1757.

[283] Saint Lambert to Rousseau, from Wolfenbuttel, Oct. 11, 1757.  Streckeisen-Moultou, i. 415.

[284] These letters are given in M. Streckeisen-Moultou’s first volume (pp. 354-414).  The thirty-second of them (Jan. 10, 1758) is perhaps the one best worth turning to.

[285] Streckeisen-Moultou, i. 412.  May 6, 1768. Conf., x. 15.

[286] Ib. x. 22.

[287] Ib. x. 18.  Streckeisen, i. 422.

[288] Conf., x. 24.

[289] To Madame d’Epinay, 1757. Corr., i. 362, 353.  See also Conf., ix. 307.

[290] One of the most unflinching in this kind is an Essai sur la vie et le caractere de J.J.  Rousseau, by G.H.  Morin (Paris:  1851):  the laborious production of a bitter advocate, who accepts the Confessions, Dialogues, Letters, etc., with the reverence due to verbal inspiration, and writes of everybody who offended his hero, quite in the vein of Marat towards aristocrats.