y increased by the expectation which he found among his friends
that he would show his gratitude for her many kindnesses to him, by
offering to bear her company on her journey, and during her stay in a
town which was strange to her and thoroughly familiar to him. It was to
no purpose that he protested how unfit was one invalid to be the nurse
of another; and how great an incumbrance a man would be in a coach in
the bad season, when for many days he was absolutely unable to leave his
chamber without danger. Diderot, with his usual eagerness to guide a
friend's course, wrote him a letter urging that his many obligations,
and even his grievances in respect of Madame d'Epinay, bound him to
accompany her, as he would thus repay the one and console himself for
the other. "She is going into a country where she will be like one
fallen from the clouds. She is ill; she will need amusement and
distraction. As for winter, are you worse now than you were a month
back, or than you will be at the opening of the spring? For me, I
confess that if I could not bear the coach, I would take a staff and
follow her on foot."[309] Rousseau trembled with fury, and as soon as
the transport was over, he wrote an indignant reply, in which he more or
less politely bade the panurgic one to attend to his own affairs, and
hinted that Grimm was making a tool of him. Next he wrote to Grimm
himself a letter, not unfriendly in form, asking his advice and
promising to follow it, but hardly hiding his resentment. By this time
he had found out the secret of Madame d'Epinay's supposed illness and
her anxiety to pass some months away from her family, and the share
which Grimm had in it. This, however, does not make many passages of his
letter any the less ungracious or unseemly. "If Madame d'Epinay has
shown friend' ship to me, I have shown more to her.... As for benefits,
first of all I do not like them, I do not want them, and I owe no thanks
for any that people may burden me with by force. Madame d'Epinay, being
so often left alone in the country, wished me for company; it was for
that she had kept me. After making one sacrifice to friendship, I must
now make another to gratitude. A man must be poor, must be without a
servant, must be a hater of constraint, and he must have my character,
before he can know what it is for me to live in another person's house.
For all that, I lived two years in hers, constantly brought into bondage
with the finest harangues abo