connived at.  Thus M. de Malesherbes, out of friendship for Rousseau, wished to have an edition of the New Heloisa printed in France, and sold for the benefit of the author.  That he should have done so is a curious illustration of the low morality engendered by a repressive system imperfectly carried out.  For Rousseau had sold the book to Rey.  Rey had treated with a French bookseller in the usual way, that is, had sent him half the edition printed, the bookseller paying either in cash or other books for all the copies he received.  Therefore to print an independent edition in Paris was to injure, not Rey the foreigner, but the French bookseller who stood practically in Rey’s place.  It was setting two French booksellers to ruin one another.  Rousseau emphatically declined to receive any profit from such a transaction.  But, said Malesherbes, you sold to Rey a right which you had not got, the right of sole proprietorship, excluding the competition of a pirated reprint.  Then, answered Rousseau, if the right which I sold happens to prove less than I thought, it is clear that far from taking advantage of my mistake, I owe to Rey compensation for any loss that he may suffer.[81]

The friendship of Malesherbes for the party of reason was shown on numerous occasions.  As director of the book trade he was really the censor of the literature of the time.[82] The story of his service to Diderot is well known—­how he warned Diderot that the police were about to visit his house and overhaul his papers, and how when Diderot despaired of being able to put them out of sight in his narrow quarters, Malesherbes said, “Then send them all to me,” and took care of them until the storm was overpast.  The proofs of the New Heloisa came through his hands, and now he made himself Rousseau’s agent in the affairs relative to the printing of Emilius.  Rousseau entrusted the whole matter to him and to Madame de Luxembourg, being confident that, in acting through persons of such authority and position, he should be protected against any unwitting illegality.  Instead of being sent to Rey, the manuscript was sold to a bookseller in Paris for six thousand francs.[83] A long time elapsed before any proofs reached the author, and he soon perceived that an edition was being printed in France as well as in Holland.  Still, as Malesherbes was in some sort the director of the enterprise, the author felt no alarm.  Duclos came to visit him one day, and Rousseau read aloud to him the Savoyard Vicar’s Profession of Faith.  “What, citizen,” he cried, “and that is part of a book that they are printing at Paris!  Be kind enough not to tell any one that you read this to me."[84] Still Rousseau remained secure.  Then the printing came to a standstill, and he could not find out the reason, because Malesherbes was away, and the printer did not take the trouble to answer his letters.  “My natural tendency,” he says, and as the rest of his life only too abundantly proved, “is to be afraid of darkness; mystery