the exact feature, the perceptible detail no longer detected by us.  Every abuse, every vice, every excess of refinement and of culture, all that social and moral disease which Rousseau scourged with an author’s emphasis, existed before them under their own eyes, in their own breasts, visible and daily manifested in thousands of domestic incidents.  In applying satire they had only to observe or to remember.  Their experience completed the book, and, through the co-operation of his readers, the author possessed power which he is now deprived of.  If we were to put ourselves in their place we should recover their impressions.  His denunciations and sarcasms, the harsh things of all sorts he says of the great, of fashionable people and of women, his rude and cutting tone, provoke and irritate, but are not displeasing.  On the contrary, after so many compliments, insipidities and petty versification all this quickens the blunted taste; it is the sensation of strong common wine after long indulgence in orgeat and preserved citron.  Accordingly, his first discourse against art and literature “lifts one at once above the clouds.”  But his idyllic writings touch the heart more powerfully than his satires.  If men listen to the moralist that scolds them they throng in the footsteps of the magician that charms them; especially do women and the young adhere to one who shows them the promised land.  All accumulated dissatisfactions, weariness of the world, ennui, vague disgust, a multitude of suppressed desires gush forth, like subterranean waters, under the sounding line that for the first time brings them to light.  Rousseau with his soundings struck deep and true through his own trials and through genius.  In a wholly artificial society where people are drawing room puppets, and where life consists in a graceful parade according to a recognized model, he preaches a return to nature, independence, earnestness, passion, and effusion, a manly, active, ardent and happy existence in the open air and in sunshine.  What an opening for restrained faculties, for the broad and luxurious fountain ever bubbling in man’s breast, and for which their nice society provides no issue! — woman of the court is familiar with love as then practiced, simply a preference, often only a pastime, mere gallantry of which the exquisite polish poorly conceals the shallowness, coldness and, occasionally, wickedness; in short, adventures, amusements and personages as described by Crébillion jr.  One evening, about to go out to the opera ball, she finds the “Nouvelle Heloïse” on her toilet-table; it is not surprising that she keeps her horses and footmen waiting from hour to hour, and that at four o’clock in the morning she orders the horses to be unharnessed, and then passes the rest of the night in reading, and that she is stifled with her tears; for the first time in her life she finds a man that loves[39].  In like manner if you would comprehend the success of “Emile,” call to mind the children we