who had publicly taken his
part.[103] Within a fortnight this blow was followed by another. His
two books were reported to the senate of Berne, and Rousseau was
informed by one of the authorities that a notification was on its way
admonishing him to quit the canton within the space of fifteen
days.[104] This stroke he avoided by flight to Motiers, a village in
the principality of Neuchatel (July 10), then part of the dominions of
the King of Prussia.[105] Rousseau had some antipathy to Frederick,
both because he had beaten the French, whom Rousseau loved, and
because his maxims and his conduct alike seemed to trample under foot
respect for the natural law and not a few human duties. He had
composed a verse to the effect that Frederick thought like a
philosopher and acted like a king, philosopher and king notoriously
being words of equally evil sense in his dialect. There was also a
passage in Emilius about Adrastus, King of the Daunians, which was
commonly understood to mean Frederick, King of the Prussians. Still
Rousseau was acute enough to know that mean passions usually only rule
the weak, and have little hold over the strong. He boldly wrote both
to the king and to Lord Marischal, the governor of the principality,
informing them that he was there, and asking permission to remain in
the only asylum left for him upon the earth.[106] He compared himself
loftily to Coriolanus among the Volscians, and wrote to the king in a
vein that must have amused the strong man. "I have said much ill of
you, perhaps I shall still say more; yet, driven from France, from
Geneva, from the canton of Berne, I am come to seek shelter in your
states. Perhaps I was wrong in not beginning there; this is eulogy of
which you are worthy. Sire, I have deserved no grace from you, and I
seek none, but I thought it my duty to inform your majesty that I am
in your power, and that I am so of set design. Your majesty will
dispose of me as shall seem good to you."[107] Frederick, though no
admirer of Rousseau or his writings,[108] readily granted the required
permission. He also, says Lord Marischal, "gave me orders to furnish
him his small necessaries if he would accept them; and though that
king's philosophy be very different from that of Jean Jacques, yet he
does not think that a man of an irreproachable life is to be
persecuted because his sentiments are singular. He designs to build
him a hermitage with a little garden, which I find he will not acc