In the same year, we may add, when the tremendous struggle of the Seven Years’ War was closing, the philosopher wrote a second terse epistle to the king, and with this their direct communication came to an end.  “Sire, you are my protector and my benefactor; I would fain repay you if I can.  You wish to give me bread; is there none of your own subjects in want of it?  Take that sword away from my sight, it dazzles and pains me.  It has done its work only too well; the sceptre is abandoned.  Great is the career for kings of your stuff, and you are still far from the term; time presses, you have not a moment to lose.  Fathom well your heart, O Frederick!  Can you dare to die without having been the greatest of men?  Would that I could see Frederick, the just and the redoubtable, covering his states with multitudes of men to whom he should be a father; then will J.J.  Rousseau, the foe of kings, hasten to die at the foot of his throne."[116] Frederick, strong as his interest was in all curious persons who could amuse him, was too busy to answer this, and Rousseau was not yet recognised as Voltaire’s rival in power and popularity.

Motiers is one of the half-dozen decent villages standing in the flat bottom of the Val de Travers, a widish valley that lies between the gorges of the Jura and the Lake of Neuchatel, and is famous in our day for its production of absinthe and of asphalt.  The flat of the valley, with the Reuss making a bald and colourless way through the midst of it, is nearly treeless, and it is too uniform to be very pleasing.  In winter the climate is most rigorous, for the level is high, and the surrounding hills admit the sun’s rays late and cut them off early.  Rousseau’s description, accurate and recognisable as it is,[117] strikes an impartial tourist as too favourable.  But when a piece of scenery is a home to a man, he has an eye for a thousand outlines, changes of light, soft variations of colour; the landscape lives for him with an unspoken suggestion and intimate association, to all of which the swift passing stranger is very cold.

His cottage, which is still shown, was in the midst of the other houses, and his walks, which were at least as important to him as the home in which he dwelt, lay mostly among woody heights with streaming cascades.  The country abounded in natural curiosities of a humble sort, and here that interest in plants which had always been strong in him, began to grow into a passion.  Rousseau had so curious a feeling about them, that when in his botanical expeditions he came across a single flower of its kind, he could never bring himself to pluck it.  His sight, though not good for distant objects, was of the very finest for things held close; his sense of smell was so acute and subtle that, according to a good witness, he might have classified plants by odours, if language furnished as many names as nature supplies varieties of fragrance.[118] He insisted in all botanising and other walking excursions