ns alone to
fix both the cult and the unintelligible dogma, and that, consequently,
it was the duty of the citizen to accept the dogma and follow the cult
prescribed by law." Strange eccentricity of the human mind! The
shackles of civilization are oppressive to Rousseau, and yet he would
impose the yoke of the state upon consciences. The natural man does not
reflect, and does not discuss his religion; whilst seeking to recover the
obliterated ideal of nature, the philosopher halts on the road at the
principles of Louis XIV. touching religious liberties.

[Illustration: Rousseau and Madame D'Epinay----338]

Madame d'Epinay had offered Rousseau a retreat in her little house, the
Hermitage. There it was that he began the tale of _La Nouvelle Heloise,_
which was finished at Marshal de Montmorency's, when the susceptible and
cranky temper of the philosopher had justified the malevolent predictions
of Grimm. The latter had but lately said to Madame d'Epinay "I see in
Rousseau nothing but pride concealed everywhere about him; you will do
him a very sorry service in giving him a home at the Hermitage, but you
will do yourself a still more sorry one. Solitude will complete the
blackening of his imagination; he will fancy all his friends unjust,
ungrateful, and you first of all, if you once refuse to be at his beck
and call; he will accuse you of having bothered him to live under your
roof and of having prevented him from yielding to the wishes of his
country. I already see the germ of these accusations in the turn of the
letters you have shown me."

Rousseau quarrelled with Madame d'Epinay, and shortly afterwards with all
the philosophical circle: Grimm, Helvetius, D'Holbach, Diderot; his
quarrels with the last were already of old date, they had made some
noise. "Good God!" said the Duke of Castries in astonishment, "wherever
I go I hear of nothing but this Rousseau and this Diderot! Did anybody
ever? Fellows who are nobody, fellows who have no house, who lodge on a
third floor! Positively, one can't stand that sort of thing!" The
rupture was at last complete, it extended to Grimm as well as to Diderot.
"Nobody can put himself in my place," wrote Rousseau, "and nobody will
see that I am a being apart, who has not the character, the maxims, the
resources of the rest of them, and who must not be judged by their
rules."

Rousseau was right; he was a being apart; and the philosophers could not
forgive him for his ind