lucked at
the expense of others, is ever apt to be transformed. Mortification of
the considerable spiritual pride that was yet alive after this lapse,
was a strong element in the sum of his emotion, and it was pointed by
the reflection which stung him so incessantly, that his monitress was
younger than himself. He could never master his own contempt for the
gallantry of grizzled locks.[279] His austerer self might at any rate
have been consoled by knowing that this scene was the beginning of the
end, though the end came without any seeking on his part and without
violence. To his amazement, one day Saint Lambert and Madame d'Houdetot
came to the Hermitage, asking him to give them dinner, and much to the
credit of human nature's elasticity, the three passed a delightful
afternoon. The wronged lover was friendly, though a little stiff, and he
passed occasional slights which Rousseau would surely not have forgiven,
if he had not been disarmed by consciousness of guilt. He fell asleep,
as we can well imagine that he might do, while Rousseau read aloud his
very inadequate justification of Providence against Voltaire.[280]

In time he returned to the army, and Rousseau began to cure himself of
his mad passion. His method, however, was not unsuspicious, for it
involved the perilous assistance of Madame d'Houdetot. Fortunately her
loyalty and good sense forced a more resolute mode upon him. He found,
or thought he found her distracted, emharrassed, indifferent. In despair
at not being allowed to heal his passionate malady in his own fashion,
he did the most singular thing that he could have done under the
circumstances. He wrote to Saint Lambert.[281] His letter is a prodigy
of plausible duplicity, though Rousseau in some of his mental states had
so little sense of the difference between the actual and the imaginary,
and was moreover so swiftly borne away on a flood of fine phrases, that
it is hard to decide how far this was voluntary, and how far he was his
own dupe. Voluntary or not, it is detestable. We pass the false whine
about "being abandoned by all that was dear to him," as if he had not
deliberately quitted Paris against the remonstrance of every friend he
had; about his being "solitary and sad," as if he was not ready at this
very time to curse any one who intruded on his solitude, and hindered
him of a single half-hour in the desert spots that he adored.
Remembering the scenes in moon-lighted groves and elsewhere, we