to the Republic of Geneva. He had discovered in private
property the source of all the evils of society.

In Switzerland Rousseau prepared a first redaction of his political
treatise, the _Contrat Social_, and filled his heart with the beauty
of those prospects which form an environment for the lovers in his
Heloise. In 1756 he was established, through the kindness of Madame
d'Epinay, in the Hermitage, near the borders of the forest of
Montmorency. His delight in the woods and fields was great; his
delight in Madame d'Houdetot, kinswoman of his hostess, was a more
troubled passion. Quarrels with Madame d'Epinay, quarrels with Grimm
and Diderot, estrangement from Madame d'Houdetot, closed the scene
at the Hermitage.

Authorship, however, had its joys and consolations. The _Lettre a
D'Alembert_, a censure of the theatre (1758), was succeeded by _La
Nouvelle Heloise_ (1761), by the _Contrat Social_ (1762), and _Emile_
(1762). The days at Montmorency which followed his departure from
the Hermitage passed in calm. With the publication of _Emile_ the
storms began again. The book, condemned by the Sorbonne, was ordered
by the Parliament to be burnt by the common executioner. Rousseau
escaped imprisonment by flight. In Switzerland he could not settle
near Voltaire. A champion for the doctrine of a providential order
of the world, an enemy of the stage--especially in republican
Geneva--Rousseau had flung indignant words against Voltaire, and
Voltaire had tossed back words of bitter scorn. Geneva had followed
Paris in its hostility towards Rousseau's recent publications; whose
doing could it be except Voltaire's? He fled from his persecutors
to Motiers, where the King of Prussia's governor afforded him
protection. Renewed quarrels with his countrymen, clerical
intolerance, mob violence, an envenomed pamphlet from Voltaire, once
more drove him forth. He took refuge on an island in the lake of Bienne,
only to be expelled by the authorities of Berne. Encouraged by
Hume--"le bon David"--he arrived in January 1766 in London.

At Wootton, in the Peak of Derbyshire, Rousseau prepared the first
five books of his _Confessions_. Within a little time he had assured
himself that Hume was joined with D'Alembert and Voltaire in a
triumvirate of persecutors to defame his character and render him
an outcast; the whole human race had conspired to destroy him. Again
Rousseau fled, sojourned a year at Trye-Chateau under an assumed name,
and af