[CHAPTER XIV]
THE CITY OF ROUSSEAU AND CALVIN
APPARENTLY Geneva is prouder of being the Mother of Rousseau than of having adopted Calvin. Both were exiled—Calvin by his enemies; Rousseau by his worst enemy, himself. Calvin, having settled the basis of his theology, built himself on it, never shaken; Rousseau canted and recanted and rerecanted. He was a Protestant; he was a Catholic; he was a free-thinker; he was a deist.
Once, at Madame d’Epinay’s, Saint Lambert avowed himself an atheist. Rousseau exclaimed:—“If it is cowardice to allow anyone to say ill about an absent friend, then it is a crime to allow anyone to say evil of his God who is present, and, gentlemen, I believe in God.”
Saint Lambert indulged in still another sneering remark and Rousseau threatened to leave if anything more of the kind were said.
Curiously enough, Rousseau, who was a stickler for free speech, sided against Voltaire in his battle against Calvinism. He saw that the great scoffer wanted to upset the habits and customs of Calvin’s city, to introduce a love of pleasure and of luxury and especially of the theatre. He wrote:—
“So Voltaire’s weapons are satire, black falsehood, and libels. Thus he repays the hospitality which Geneva by a fatal indulgence has shown him. This fanfaron of impiety, this lofty genius and this low soul, this man so great through his talents, so base (vil) in his use of them, will leave long and cruel memories among us. Ridicule, that poison of good sense and of uprightness, satire, enemy of the public peace, flabbiness, arrogant pomp will henceforth make a people of trivialities, of buffoons, of wits, of commerce, who in place of the consideration once enjoyed by our literary men will put Geneva on the level of the Academies of Marseilles and of Angers.”
This letter was widely circulated. Voltaire, who might have been more offended by its lack of style than by its attack on him, henceforth used every opportunity to injure and insult Rousseau.