ufferings, which is in his
cursed head and his pride; he raises up imaginary matters, so as to have
the pleasure of complaining of the whole human race."[305] More than
once he assures her that Rousseau will end by going mad, it being
impossible that so hot and ill-organised a head should endure
solitude.[306] Rousseauite partisans usually explain all this by
supposing that Grimm was eager to set a woman for whom he had a passion,
against a man who was suspected of having a passion for her; and it is
possible that jealousy may have stimulated the exercise of his natural
shrewdness. But this shrewdness, added to entire want of imagination and
a very narrow range of sympathy, was quite enough to account for Grimm's
harsh judgment, without the addition of any sinister sentiment. He was
perfectly right in suspecting Rousseau of want of loyalty to Madame
d'Epinay, for we find our hermit writing to her in strains of perfect
intimacy, while he was writing of her to Madame d'Houdetot as "your
unworthy sister."[307] On the other hand, while Madame d'Epinay was
overwhelming him with caressing phrases, she was at the same moment
describing him to Grimm as a master of impertinence and intractableness.
As usual where there is radical incompatibility of character, an
attempted reconciliation between Grimm and Rousseau (some time in the
early part of October 1757) had only made the thinly veiled antipathy
more resolute. Rousseau excused himself for wrongs of which in his heart
he never thought himself guilty. Grimm replied by a discourse on the
virtues of friendship and his own special aptitude for practising them.
He then conceded to the impetuous penitent the kiss of peace, in a
slight embrace which was like the accolade given by a monarch to new
knights.[308] The whole scene is ignoble. We seem to be watching an
unclean cauldron, with Theresa's mother, a cringing and babbling crone,
standing witch-like over it and infusing suspicion, falsehood, and
malice. When minds are thus surcharged, any accident suffices to
release the evil creatures that lurk in an irritated imagination.

One day towards the end of the autumn of 1757, Rousseau learned to his
unbounded surprise that Madame d'Epinay had been seized with some
strange disorder, which made it advisable that she should start without
any delay for Geneva, there to place herself under the care of Tronchin,
who was at that time the most famous doctor in Europe. His surprise was
greatl