He dubbed “Eloïsa” “foolish, bourgeois, impudent, and wearisome.” It was “one of the infamies of the century” to have admired it. And he wrote to Theriot: “No novel of Jean Jacques, if you please. I have read him for my misfortune; and it would have been for his if I had the time to say what I thought of it.”
The last words were only the blind which hoodwinked nobody. “There is time for everything if one likes to use it.” Staying at Ferney at the moment was the Marquis de Ximenès, ex-admirer of Madame Denis and now forgiven that unpleasant little business of the stolen manuscript of a few years back.
There quickly appeared four letters on (or rather against) “The New Eloïsa,” the first of which bore the signature of the Marquis, and all of which bore unmistakable traits of a famous style.
Voltaire denied them, according to custom.
But it was the denial pour rire.
The wise d’Alembert wrote and remonstrated with his friend for “declaiming openly” against Jean Jacques, who, after all, was of their party and with a warmth and ardour which might serve it well.
But Rousseau had begun to sting and irritate the sensitive skin of his great rival, and would by no means be shaken off. In the October of 1761 Voltaire said that Jean Jacques wrote about once a fortnight to incite the Genevan ministers against theatres.
In the meantime, fortunately for them both, Voltaire had interests which eclipsed even that excited by a sentimental rival’s annoying Puritanism or long-winded romance.
He was fighting the Jesuits and building a church.
On January 1, 1761, he wrote to tell Helvétius that he had reclaimed from the Jesuits of Ornex, his neighbours, with whom he had hitherto been on good terms, the estate belonging to six poor brothers, of which the Jesuits had robbed them during their minority.