this just precept Rousseau was to the end of his life absolutely without fault.  No one was more rigorously careful to make his independence sure by the fewness of his wants and by minute financial probity.  This firm limitation of his material desires was one cause of his habitual and almost invariable refusal to accept presents, though no doubt another cause was the stubborn and ungracious egoism which made him resent every obligation.

It is worth remembering in illustration of the peculiar susceptibility and softness of his character where women were concerned—­it was not quite without exception—­that he did not fly into a fit of rage over their gifts, as he did over those of men.  He remonstrated, but in gentler key.  “What could I do with four pullets?” he wrote to a lady who had presented them to him.  “I began by sending two of them to people to whom I am indifferent.  That made me think of the difference there is between a present and a testimony of friendship.  The first will never find in me anything but a thankless heart; the second....  Ah, if you had only given me news of yourself without sending me anything else, how rich and how grateful you would have made me; instead of that the pullets are eaten, and the best thing I can do is to forget all about them; let us say no more."[25] Rude and repellent as this may seem, and as it is, there is a rough kind of playfulness about it, when compared with the truculence which he was not slow to exhibit to men.  If a friend presumed to thank him for any service, he was peremptorily rebuked for his ignorance of the true qualities of friendship, with which thankfulness has no connection.  He ostentatiously refused to offer thanks for services himself, even to a woman whom he always treated with so much consideration as the Marechale de Luxembourg.  He once declared boldly that modesty is a false virtue,[26] and though he did not go so far as to make gratitude the subject of a corresponding formula of denunciation, he always implied that this too is really one of the false virtues.  He confessed to Malesherbes, without the slightest contrition, that he was ungrateful by nature.[27] To Madame d’Epinay he once went still further, declaring that he found it hard not to hate those who had used him well.[28] Undoubtedly he was right so far as this, that gratitude answering to a spirit of exaction in a benefactor is no merit; a service done in expectation of gratitude is from that fact stripped of the quality which makes gratitude due, and is a mere piece of egoism in altruistic disguise.  Kindness in its genuine forms is a testimony of good feeling, and conventional speech is perhaps a little too hard, as well as too shallow and unreal, in calling the recipient evil names because he is unable to respond to the good feeling.  Rousseau protested against a conception of friendship which makes of what ought to be disinterested helpfulness a title to everlasting tribute.  His way of expressing this was harsh