quite without exception--that he did not fly into a fit of rage over
their gifts, as he did over those of men. He remonstrated, but in
gentler key. "What could I do with four pullets?" he wrote to a lady
who had presented them to him. "I began by sending two of them to
people to whom I am indifferent. That made me think of the difference
there is between a present and a testimony of friendship. The first
will never find in me anything but a thankless heart; the second....
Ah, if you had only given me news of yourself without sending me
anything else, how rich and how grateful you would have made me;
instead of that the pullets are eaten, and the best thing I can do is
to forget all about them; let us say no more."[25] Rude and repellent
as this may seem, and as it is, there is a rough kind of playfulness
about it, when compared with the truculence which he was not slow to
exhibit to men. If a friend presumed to thank him for any service, he
was peremptorily rebuked for his ignorance of the true qualities of
friendship, with which thankfulness has no connection. He
ostentatiously refused to offer thanks for services himself, even to a
woman whom he always treated with so much consideration as the
Marechale de Luxembourg. He once declared boldly that modesty is a
false virtue,[26] and though he did not go so far as to make gratitude
the subject of a corresponding formula of denunciation, he always
implied that this too is really one of the false virtues. He confessed
to Malesherbes, without the slightest contrition, that he was
ungrateful by nature.[27] To Madame d'Epinay he once went still
further, declaring that he found it hard not to hate those who had
used him well.[28] Undoubtedly he was right so far as this, that
gratitude answering to a spirit of exaction in a benefactor is no
merit; a service done in expectation of gratitude is from that fact
stripped of the quality which makes gratitude due, and is a mere piece
of egoism in altruistic disguise. Kindness in its genuine forms is a
testimony of good feeling, and conventional speech is perhaps a little
too hard, as well as too shallow and unreal, in calling the recipient
evil names because he is unable to respond to the good feeling.
Rousseau protested against a conception of friendship which makes of
what ought to be disinterested helpfulness a title to everlasting
tribute. His way of expressing this was harsh and unamiable, but it
was not without an element of upri