During his stay at Motiers Rousseau’s time was hardly ever his own.  Visitors of all nations, drawn either by respect for his work or by curiosity to see a man who had been prescribed by so many governments, came to him in throngs.  His partisans at Geneva insisted on sending people to convince themselves how good a man they were persecuting.  “I had never been free from strangers for six weeks,” he writes.  “Two days after, I had a Westphalian gentleman and one from Genoa; six days later, two persons from Zurich, who stayed a week; then a Genevese, recovering from an illness, and coming for change of air, fell ill again, and he has only just gone away."[138] One visitor, writing home to his wife of the philosopher to whom he had come on a pilgrimage, describes his manners in terms which perhaps touch us with surprise:—­“Thou hast no idea how charming his society is, what true politeness there is in his manners, what a depth of serenity and cheerfulness in his talk.  Didst thou not expect quite a different picture, and figure to thyself an eccentric creature, always grave and sometimes even abrupt?  Ah, what a mistake!  To an expression of great mildness he unites a glance of fire, and eyes of a vivacity the like of which never was seen.  When you handle any matter in which he takes an interest, then his eyes, his lips, his hands, everything about him speaks.  You would be quite wrong to picture in him an everlasting grumbler.  Not at all; he laughs with those who laugh, he chats and jokes with children, he rallies his housekeeper."[139] He was not so civil to all the world, and occasionally turned upon his pursuers with a word of most sardonic roughness.[140] But he could also be very generous.  We find him pressing a loan from his scanty store on an outcast adventurer, and warning him, “When I lend (which happens rarely enough), ’tis my constant maxim never to count on repayment, nor to exact it."[141] He received hundreds of letters, some seeking an application of his views on education to a special case, others craving further exposition of his religious doctrines.  Before he had been at Motiers nine months he had paid ten louis for the postage of letters, which after all contained little more than reproaches, insults, menaces, imbecilities.[142]

Not the least curious of his correspondence at this time is that with the Prince of Wuertemberg, then living near Lausanne.[143] The prince had a little daughter four months old, and he was resolved that her upbringing should be carried on as the author of Emilius might please to direct.  Rousseau replied courteously that he did not pretend to direct the education of princes or princesses.[144] His undaunted correspondent sent him full details of his babe’s habits and faculties, and continued to do so at short intervals, with the fondness of a young mother or an old nurse.  Rousseau was interested, and took some trouble to draw up rules for the child’s nurture and admonition.  One may smile now and