ew Heloisa and its popularity, it is
well to think of it as a delineation of love, in connection not only
with such a book as the Pucelle, where there is at least wit, but with
a story like Duclos's, which all ladies both read and were not in the
least ashamed to acknowledge that they had read; or still worse, such
an abomination as Diderot's first stories; or a story like Laclos's,
which came a generation later, and with its infinite briskness and
devilry carried the tradition of artistic impurity to as vigorous a
manifestation as it is capable of reaching.[42] To a generation whose
literature is as pure as the best English, American, and German
literature is in the present day, the New Heloisa might without doubt
be corrupting. To the people who read Crebillon and the Pucelle, it
was without doubt elevating.

The case is just as strong if we turn from books to manners. Without
looking beyond the circle of names that occur in Rousseau's own
history, we see how deep the depravity had become. Madame d'Epinay's
gallant sat at table with the husband, and the husband was perfectly
aware of the relations between them. M. d'Epinay had notorious
relations with two public women, and was not ashamed to refer to them
in the presence of his wife, and even to seek her sympathy on an
occasion when one of them was in some trouble. Not only this, but
husband and lover used to pursue their debaucheries in the town
together in jovial comradeship. An opera dancer presided at the table
of a patrician abbe in his country house, and he passed weeks in her
house in the town. As for shame, says Barbier on one occasion, "'tis
true the king has a mistress, but who has not?--except the Duke of
Orleans; he has withdrawn to Ste. Genevieve, and is thoroughly
despised in consequence, and rightly."[43] Reeking disorder such as
all this illustrates, made the passion of the two imaginary lovers of
the fair lake seem like a breath from the garden of Eden. One virtue
was lost in that simple paradise, but even that loss was followed by
circumstances of mental pain and far circling distress, which banished
the sin into a secondary place; and what remained to strike the
imagination of the time were delightful pictures of fast union between
two enchanting women, of the patience and compassionateness of a grave
mother, of the chivalrous warmth and helpfulness of a loyal friend.
Any one anxious to pick out sensual strokes and turns of grossness
could make a s