ised, and I am still waiting for them: he thought it
best that I should in the meantime be silent, and I held my tongue, and
shall do so the rest of my life, censured as I am for having brought
against Vernes a heavy imputation, false and unsupportable by proof,
although I am still fully persuaded, nay, as convinced as I am of my
existence, that he is the author of the libel. My memoir is in the hands
of Du Peyrou. Should it ever be published my reasons will be found in
it, and the heart of Jean Jacques, with which my contemporaries would not
be acquainted, will I hope be known.

I have now to proceed to my catastrophe at Motiers, and to my departure
from Val de Travers, after a residence of two years and a half, and an
eight months suffering with unshaken constancy of the most unworthy
treatment. It is impossible for me clearly to recollect the
circumstances of this disagreeable period, but a detail of them will be
found in a publication to that effect by Du Peyrou, of which I shall
hereafter have occasion to speak.

After the departure of Madam de Verdelin the fermentation increased, and,
notwithstanding the reiterated rescripts of the king, the frequent orders
of the council of state, and the cares of the chatelain and magistrates
of the place, the people, seriously considering me as antichrist, and
perceiving all their clamors to be of no effect, seemed at length
determined to proceed to violence; stones were already thrown after me
in the roads, but I was however in general at too great a distance to
receive any harm from them. At last, in the night of the fair of
Motiers, which is in the beginning of September, I was attacked in my
habitation in such a manner as to endanger the lives of everybody in the
house.

At midnight I heard a great noise in the gallery which ran along the back
part of the house. A shower of stones thrown against the window and the
door which opened to the gallery fell into it with so much noise and
violence, that my dog, which usually slept there, and had begun to bark,
ceased from fright, and ran into a corner gnawing and scratching the
planks to endeavor to make his escape. I immediately rose, and was
preparing to go from my chamber into the kitchen, when a stone thrown by
a vigorous arm crossed the latter, after having broken the window, forced
open the door of my chamber, and fell at my feet, so that had I been a
moment sooner upon the floor I should have had the stone against m