on going bareheaded, even in the heat of the dog-days; he declared that the action of the sun did him good.  When the days began to turn, the summer was straightway at an end for him:  “My imagination,” he said, in a phrase which went further through his life than he supposed, “at once brings winter.”  He hated rain as much as he loved sun, so he must once have lost all the mystic fascination of the green Savoy lakes gleaming luminous through pale showers, and now again must have lost the sombre majesty of the pines of his valley dripping in torn edges of cloud, and all those other sights in landscape that touch subtler parts of us than comforted sense.

One of his favourite journeys was to Colombier, the summer retreat of Lord Marischal.  For him he rapidly conceived the same warm friendship which he felt for the Duke of Luxembourg, whom he had just left.  And the sagacious, moderate, silent Scot had as warm a liking for the strange refugee who had come to him for shelter, or shall we call it a kind of shaggy compassion, as of a faithful inarticulate creature.  His letters, which are numerous enough, abound in expressions of hearty good-will.  These, if we reflect on the genuine worth, veracity, penetration, and experience of the old man who wrote them, may fairly be counted the best testimony that remains to the existence of something sterling at the bottom of Rousseau’s character.[119] It is here no insincere fine lady of the French court, but a homely and weather-beaten Scotchman, who speaks so often of his refugee’s rectitude of heart and true sensibility.[120]

He insisted on being allowed to settle a small sum on Theresa, who had joined Rousseau at Motiers, and in other ways he showed a true solicitude and considerateness both for her and for him.[121] It was his constant dream, that on his return to Scotland, Jean Jacques should accompany him, and that with David Hume, they would make a trio of philosophic hermits; that this was no mere cheery pleasantry is shown by the pains he took in settling the route for the journey.[122] The plan only fell through in consequence of Frederick’s cordial urgency that his friend should end his days with him; he returned to Prussia and lived at Sans Souci until the close, always retaining something of his good-will for “his excellent savage,” as he called the author of the Discourses.  They had some common antipathies, including the fundamental one of dislike to society, and especially to the society of the people of Neuchatel, the Gascons of Switzerland.  “Rousseau is gay in company,” Lord Marischal wrote to Hume, “polite, and what the French call aimable, and gains ground daily in the opinion of even the clergy here.  His enemies elsewhere continue to persecute him, and he is pestered with anonymous letters."[123]