It was two o’clock in the morning.  A messenger had come in hot haste to carry him to Madame de Luxembourg.  News had reached her of the proposed decree of the parliament.  She knew Rousseau well enough to be sure that if he were seized and examined, her own share and that of Malesherbes in the production of the condemned book would be made public, and their position uncomfortably compromised.  It was to their interest that he should avoid arrest by flight, and they had no difficulty in persuading him to fall in with their plans.  After a tearful farewell with Theresa, who had hardly been out of his sight for seventeen years, and many embraces from the greater ladies of the castle, he was thrust into a chaise and despatched on the first stage of eight melancholy years of wandering and despair, to be driven from place to place, first by the fatuous tyranny of magistrates and religious doctors, and then by the yet more cruel spectres of his own diseased imagination, until at length his whole soul became the home of weariness and torment.

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] Conf., x. 62.

[2] Conf., x.

[3] Ib. x. 70.

[4] Louis Francois de Bourbon, Prince de Conti (1717-1776), was great-grandson of the brother of the Great Conde.  He performed creditable things in the war of the Austrian Succession (in Piedmont 1744, in Belgium 1745); had a scheme of foreign policy as director of the secret diplomacy of Lewis XV. (1745-1756), which was to make Turkey, Poland, Sweden, Prussia, a barrier against Russia primarily, and Austria secondarily; lastly went into moderate opposition to the court, protesting against the destruction of the parlements (1771), and afterwards opposing the reforms of Turgot (1776).  Finally he had the honour of refusing the sacraments of the church on his deathbed.  See Martin’s Hist. de France, xv. and xvi.

[5] Conf., 97. Corr., v. 215.

[6] Corr., ii. 144.  Oct. 7, 1760.

[7] Conf., x. 98.

[8] The reader will distinguish this correspondent of Rousseau’s, Comtesse de Boufflers-Rouveret (1727-18—­), from the Duchesse de Boufflers, which was the title of Rousseau’s Marechale de Luxembourg before her second marriage.  And also from the Marquise de Boufflers, said to be the mistress of the old king Stanislaus at Luneville, and the mother of the Chevalier de Boufflers (who was the intimate of Voltaire, sat in the States General, emigrated, did homage to Napoleon, and finally died peaceably under Lewis XVIII.).  See Jal’s Dict.  Critique, 259-262.  Sainte Beuve has an essay on our present Comtesse de Boufflers (Nouveaux Lundis, iv. 163).  She is the Madame de Boufflers who was taken by Beauclerk to visit Johnson in his Temple chambers, and was conducted to her coach by him in a remarkable manner (Boswell’s Life, ch. li. p. 467).  Also much talked of in H. Walpole’s Letters.  See D’Alembert to Frederick, April 15, 1768.