He writes to Blair, on 28th December:—
"Dear Doctor,—After great wavering and uncertainty, between Paris and Edinburgh, (for I never allowed London to enter into the question,) I have, at last, fixed my resolution to remain some time longer in Paris. Perhaps I may take a trip to Rome next autumn. Had I returned to Edinburgh, I was sensible that I shut myself up, in a manner, for life; and I imagine that I am, even yet, too young and healthy, and in too good spirits, to come to that determination. If you please, therefore, you may continue in my house, which I am glad pleases you. If you leave it, as you thought you would, Nairne may have it for £35, as we agreed."[293:2]
We have now to return to Jean Jacques Rousseau, whom we left, in 1762, seeking protection from the Earl Marischal at Neufchâtel. He finally took up his abode at Motiers Travers, a village on one of the passes of the Jura; where, now that some offensive associations connected with his character and writings have died away, the fame of his genius still lives, and has been no unprofitable commodity to the inhabitants. Here he had a wild rocky district to wander
over, where he was not liable to encounter those dangerous impediments which beset the sojourners in the Alps. He had, at the same time, what was more to his purpose, a zealous priesthood and an intolerant populace surrounding him. That the outward manifestations of a morality, odious to his new neighbours, might not be wanting, he sent for his celebrated mistress, Thérèse la Vasseur, with whom he continued openly to live; and that the populace, thus exasperated, might be under no mistake as to the proper person to throw stones at, he adopted the garb of an Armenian.
It is much disputed whether he was really subjected to the attacks of which he afterwards complained; and it is said, that whatever tangible evidence of them was perceptible to other eyes than his own, was the doing of Mademoiselle la Vasseur, to drive him from a neighbourhood which she disliked. It will be found, however, that his story, as reported by Hume in the letters which follow, substantially coincides with the narrative in the "Confessions." This is in some measure a testimony to the sincerity of Rousseau's own conviction, that those hostile efforts were made against him; and indeed it would be useless to question the sincerity of his belief in any thing indicative of the malevolence of his fellow-beings. Having fled from Motiers, he lived for some time on the island of St. Pierre, in the lake of Bienne; and, driven from that asylum, he seems to have hesitated between England and Prussia as a place of refuge. He left the State of Bienne at the date at which his "Confessions" terminate, 29th October, 1765. He proceeded to Strasburg, where, by wearing his Armenian dress in the country where he had been proscribed, he certainly excited a considerable sensation. He appears to
have held a sort of levée during his residence in that city, where his daily and hourly proceedings have been recorded with the precision of a court journal.[295:1]
It was here that he received Hume's letter, agreeing to aid him in finding an asylum in England. The negotiation between them had been brought to a conclusion by Madame de Verdelin, who had spent some time with Rousseau at Motiers, and persuaded him to take advantage of the impression which the Earl Marischal and Madame de Boufflers had made in his favour.[295:2]
Hume's heart was farther softened by a letter, full of miseries, which Rousseau had written to M. Clairaut. "I must own," says Hume, "I felt on this occasion an emotion of pity, mixed with indignation, to think a man of letters of such eminent merit, should be reduced, in spite of the simplicity of his manner of living, to such extreme indigence; and
that this unhappy state should be rendered more intolerable by sickness, by the approach of old age, and the implacable rage of persecution." He was inclined even to sympathize with Rousseau's petulant rejection of proferred kindness; conceiving "that a noble pride, even though carried to excess, merited some indulgence in a man of genius, who, borne up by a sense of his own superiority, and a love of independence, should have braved the storms of fortune and the insults of mankind."[296:1]
Leaving Strasburg, the wanderer proceeded to Paris, where he went about in his Armenian dress; was mobbed and stared at to his heart's content, wrote to his friends, complaining with bitter eloquence that people would allow him neither solitude nor rest, shut himself up, and went forth again to the world. Before he could have ventured to appear so publicly, in the capital where a writ had been issued for the seizure of his person, he must have received very strong assurances of protection. The arrêt of the Parliament, however, was not recalled; and his friends must have felt somewhat provoked by his pertinacious courtship of popular notice, accompanied by the pretence of a desire to avoid it, by adopting only what was simple and natural—by wearing, for instance, so simple a dress as the fur cap, caaftan, and vest of an Armenian, in the streets of Paris! Hume, who seems really to have had faith in his modesty, must still have felt it awkward that the representative of Britain should be closely allied with a person so conducting himself; and was anxious, whenever the state of public business might permit him, to see his charge safely across the Channel. It was thought, in the meantime, expedient to find for Rousseau an asylum within the