The Confessions

by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Meanwhile printed abuse went on as before, and its kindly authors reproached the authorities for treating me too mildly. This barking chorus, the instigators of which continued to act under cover, had something sinister and alarming about it. For my part, I did not get excited, but let them bark. I was told that the Sorbonne had passed a decree of censure; I did not believe it. What had the Sorbonne to do with the matter? Did they want to proclaim that I was not a good Catholic? Everybody knew it. Did they want to prove that I was not a good Calvinist? What was that to them? They would be taking on a singular responsibility if they were to usurp the office of our ministers. Before I saw the document I thought that it was being circulated in the name of the Sorbonne in order to make its members ridiculous, and I was even more of that opinion after I read it. In the end, when I was no longer in doubt that it was genuine, the only thing I could think was that the whole Sorbonne wanted putting into a lunatic asylum.

  1763 Another publication affected me rather more, because it emanated from a man I had always respected, a man whose firmness I admired, while pitying his blindness. I am speaking of the Archbishop of Paris and his mandatory letter against me.

  I felt it only fair to myself to reply to it. I could do so without hurt to my self-esteem, for this was very much the same situation as I had been in with the King of Poland. I have never liked brutal disputes after Voltaire’s fashion. I can only fight in a dignified way, and I like the man I attack to be worthy of my blows before I condescend to defend myself. I had no doubt that this mandatory letter was the work of the Jesuits; and although they were in distress themselves at the time I could still recognize their old principle of crushing those in distress. I could also follow my old principle, therefore, of showing respect for the titular author and demolishing the work; and this I think I succeeded in doing.

  I found my stay at Motiers very pleasant, and all I needed to decide me to end my days there was an assured subsistence. But living in that district was fairly expensive, and I had seen my old plans upset by the break-up of my household, by the setting up of a fresh one, by the sale or dispersal of all my furniture, and by the expenses I had been forced to incur since leaving Montmorency. Every day I saw the little capital I possessed dwindling before my eyes. Two or three years would be enough to consume the rest; and I could see no way of building it up again, unless I began to write books once more: an ill-omened trade, which I had just now abandoned.

  Convinced that things would soon change in my favour and that the public would recover from its frenzy and put the authorities to shame, I merely sought to make my resources last till that happy change took place, which would put me in a better state to choose among the various possibilities that might offer themselves. Therefore I took up my Dictionary of Music once more, which after ten years’ labour was now well advanced, and only required to be finally corrected and copied out. My books, which had recently been sent on to me, enabled me to complete the work; and my papers, which were sent at the same time, put me in the position to begin my projected memoirs, which I intended to be my sole occupation from then on. I began by copying some letters into a notebook which would guide my memory in the order of facts and dates. I had already sorted out the correspondence that I wanted to keep for this purpose, and over almost the last ten years I had an uninterrupted sequence. However, on arranging them for copying I found a gap in them that surprised me. This gap extended over nearly six months, from October 1756 till the following March. I perfectly remembered having put into my collection a number of letters from Diderot, Deleyre, Mme d’Épinay, Mme de Chenonceaux, and others, which filled this gap; but they were no longer to be found. What had become of them? Had someone rifled my papers during the months they had lain at the Hôtel de Luxembourg? That was inconceivable, and I had seen M. de Luxembourg take the key of the room in which I had deposited them. Since several letters from female correspondents and all Diderot’s were undated, and since I had been compelled to supply the dates from memory, as it were groping in the dark, in order to arrange them in their proper order, I thought at first that I had made some mistakes in dating; and I went over all the letters that had no date, or for which I had supplied one, to see if I could not discover among them those that would fill the gap. The attempt failed; I saw that the gap was a real one, and that the letters had quite certainly been removed. By whom and why -that was what beat me. These letters, dating from before my great quarrels, from the time of my first intoxication over Julie, could not be of interest to anyone. At most they contained some cavillings by Diderot, some bantering from Deleyre, protestations of friendship from Mme de Chenonceaux, and even from Mme d’Épinay, with whom I was then on the best possible terms. To whom could these letters be of any importance? What did they intend to do with them? It was not till seven years later that I suspected the frightful purpose of that theft.

  Once certain that they had disappeared, I began to look among my rough copies to see if I could discover any other losses. I found one or two which, in view of my defective memory, made me suppose that other things would be missing also from among my multitude of papers. The losses that I noticed were the rough copy of my Morals of Sensibility and the extract from the Adventures of My Lord Edward. The latter, I admit, made me suspect Mme de Luxembourg. It was La Roche, her personal servant, who had forwarded me those papers, and I could imagine no one else who could feel any interest in that fragment. But what interest could she have in the other piece, or in the missing letters, which, even with the worst intentions, could be put to no use that would injure me, short of actually falsifying them? As for the Marshal, knowing his unwavering honesty and the genuineness of his friendship for me, I could not for a moment suspect him. I could not even fix my suspicions on Mme de Luxembourg. The most reasonable thing that occurred to me, after hours of racking my brains to discover the thief, was to attach the blame on d’Alembert, who had already wormed his way into her good graces and might have found a means of rummaging among those papers and taking away what he pleased, whether manuscripts or letters, his intention being either to make some trouble for me, or merely to appropriate something that might be useful to him. My guess was that he had been misled by the title The Morals of Sensibility, and had imagined that here was the plan of a real treatise on materialism, which he would have used against me in a manner easy to imagine. Feeling sure that he would soon be undeceived on examining the manuscript, and having made up my mind entirely to give up writing, I did not worry much about these thefts, which were not the first that I had sustained at his hands* without complaining. Soon I thought no more of that breach of trust than if it had never been, and began to collect the materials left to me in order to begin work on my Confessions.

  I had long believed that the society of ministers at Geneva, or the citizens and burgesses at least, would protest against the infringement of the edict in the decree made against me. All remained quiet, at least on the surface; for there was general discontent which was only waiting for an opportunity to show itself. My friends, or those who called themselves such, wrote me letter after letter, entreating me to put myself at their head and assuring me of a public apology from the Council. Fear of the trouble and disorder my presence might cause prevented me from yielding to their entreaties and, true to the vow I had once made never to mix myself up in any civil dissension in my own country, I preferred to let the wrong remain and be perpetually banished from my native land rather than return by violent and dangerous means. I had certainly expected legal and peaceful remonstrances on the part of the citizens against an infraction of the law which greatly affected them. There was none. Their leaders were less anxious for the real redress of grievances than for a chance to show their importance. They intrigued, but kept silence, and allowed the gossips and the sanctimonious – or those who pretended to be – to give tongue, they being put forward by the Council to render me odious to the people, and to make its insults look like the product of religious zeal.

  After waiting in
vain for more than a year for someone to protest against their illegal procedure, I at last made up my mind; and seeing myself deserted by my fellow citizens, I decided to renounce my ungrateful country, in which I had never lived, from which I had never received goods or services, and by which, as a reward for the honour I had tried to bestow on it, I found myself so disgracefully treated; and this by unanimous consent, for those who ought to have spoken had said nothing. I wrote therefore to the chief syndic for that year, who I believe was M. Favre, a letter in which I formally renounced my right of citizenship, at the same time carefully observing that decency and moderation of expression that I have always employed in those acts of pride which my enemies’ cruelty has so often wrung from me in my misfortunes.

  This step at last opened the citizens’ eyes. Feeling that they had acted against their own interests in abandoning me, they took up my defence when it was too late. They had other grievances which they added to mine, and they made it the subject of several very well-reasoned protests, which they expanded and reinforced, as the rude and discouraging refusals of the Council, which felt that it had the French Ministry’s support, made them more conscious of a design to subjugate them. These arguments gave rise to various pamphlets which decided nothing, until suddenly there appeared the Letters written from the Country, a work framed with infinite skill in support of the Council, by which the Party of Public Liberty was reduced to silence and temporarily crushed. This work, a lasting monument to the rare talents of its author, was by Tronchin the Public Prosecutor,* an enlightened and intelligent man, and well versed in the laws and government of the Republic. Siluit terra.†

  1764 The Party of Liberty, recovering from their initial overthrow, undertook a reply, and came off tolerably well in time. But they all looked to me as the only man who could enter the lists against such an enemy with any hope of overthrowing him. I admit that I thought the same and, urged on by my former fellow citizens, who informed me that it was my duty to help them with my pen in a plight of which I had been the cause, I undertook to refute the Letters written from the Country; and I parodied its title by calling mine Letters written from the Mountain* I conceived and carried through this enterprise with such secrecy that, at a meeting I had at Thonon with the chief of the Party of Liberty to discuss their affairs, during which they showed me the outline of their reply, I did not so much as mention mine, which was already written. For I was afraid that some obstacle might be put in the way of its printing if the magistrates or my private enemies were to get the least wind of it. I could not, however, prevent the work from becoming known in France before its publication, where they thought it better to let it appear rather than give me too clear an idea how they had discovered my secret. I will put down what I learnt for certain about the matter, which is very little indeed, but I will say nothing about my conjectures.

  I had almost as many visitors at Motiers as at the Hermitage or Montmorency; but most of them were of a very different kind. Hitherto my callers had been people who shared some of my talents or tastes or principles, who made our common interests the excuse for their visits, and immediately introduced subjects which I could discuss with them. At Motiers it was quite different, especially with my visitors from France. These were officers or other people who had no taste for literature, most of whom had not even read my works, but who nevertheless, from what they told me, had travelled a hundred, a hundred and fifty, two hundred, or three hundred miles in order to see and admire the illustrious man, the celebrated man, the most celebrated man, etc. For from that time people were continually flinging in my face the coarsest and most impudent flatteries, which hitherto I had been spared, thanks to the respect felt for me by my visitors. As the majority of these intruders did not even condescend to tell me who or what they were, we shared no field of knowledge in common; and as they had neither read nor glanced through my works I did not know what to talk to them about. So I waited for them to start the conversation, since it was up to them to know and to inform me why they had come to see me. Naturally this did not lead to discussions which interested me very much, though they may have interested them. That depended on what they wanted to know. For as I was not mistrustful I expressed myself freely on every question that they thought fit to raise; and they went away, as a rule, as conversant as I with all the details of my situation.

  One visitor of this kind was M. de Feins, equerry to the Queen and a captain in the Queen’s cavalry, who was so persevering as to stay some days at Motiers, and even to follow me on foot, leading his horse by the bridle, as far as La Ferrière, though we had no point in common except that we both knew Mlle Fel, and both played at cup-and-ball. Before and after M. de Feins’ visit, I had another, which was much odder. Two men arrived on foot, each leading a mule carrying his scanty luggage. They put up at the inn, rubbed down their mules themselves, and asked if they could see me. To judge by their appearance, these muleteers looked like dealers in contraband; and news immediately got round that some smugglers had come to visit me. Their mere manner of approach, however, told me that they were persons of quite another kind. But if they were not smugglers they might still be adventurers, and this suspicion kept me on my guard for some time. They were not long in reassuring me. One was M. de Montauban, known as the Count de La Tour du Pin, a gentleman from Dauphiné; the other was M. Dastier of Carpentras, a retired soldier, who had put his Cross of St Louis in his pocket, since he must not display it. The gentlemen were both very pleasant and both of them most amusing. Their conversation was agreeable and interesting; and their method of travel, one that appealed so much more to me than to the French nobility in general, gave me a sort of liking of them, which their company could not fail to reinforce. But our acquaintance did not end there. It still persists, and they have come back to see me several times, not on foot, however, though that was good enough as a first introduction. But the more I have seen of those gentlemen the less I have found in common between their tastes and mine, the less I have felt that their principles were my principles, or that they were familiar with my writings, or that there was any real sympathy between us. What did they want with me then? Why did they come travelling in that way? Why did they stay several days? Why did they come back several times? Why were they anxious to be my guests? It did not occur to me then to ask these questions. But sometimes I have put them to myself since.

  Touched by their friendly advances, my heart surrendered without reflection, to M. Dastier especially, whose more open manner pleased me more than his friend’s. I even remained in correspondence with him; and when I wanted to get the Letters written from the Mountain printed, it occurred to me to apply to him in order to outwit those who were waiting for my parcel on the Dutch post. He had said a good deal, and perhaps deliberately, about the freedom of the press at Avignon, and had offered me his services, should I have anything to be printed there. I took advantage of his offer, and sent him my first sheets, one by one, by the post. But, after keeping them some time, he sent them back, informing me that no bookseller dared undertake publication; and I was compelled to go back to Rey, taking care only to send him my manuscript books one by one, and never to send the next before I had received acknowledgement of the last. Before the publication of the work I learnt that it had been seen in the ministerial offices; and d’Escherny of Neuchâtel talked to me about a book called The Man of the Mountain which d’Holbach had told him was mine. I assured him, as was quite true, that I had never written a book with that title. When the letters appeared he was furious and accused me of lying, though I had told him nothing but the truth. That is how I knew for certain that my manuscript had been seen. Being certain that Rey was trustworthy, I was forced to transfer my suspicions elsewhere, and the conclusion I preferred to come to was that my parcels had been opened in the post.

  Another acquaintance which I made at much the same time, though at first only by correspondence, was M. Laliaud of Nîmes, who wrote to me from Paris, asking me to send him my silhouette, which he told me
he needed for a marble bust of me which he was having made by Le Moine, to put in his library. If this was a piece of flattery invented to disarm me, it completely succeeded. I concluded that a man who wanted to have my bust in marble in his library must be steeped in my works, and therefore in my principles, ano that he loved me because his soul was at one with mine. I could hardly have helped being attracted by such an idea. Subsequently I met M. de Laliaud and found him most anxious to do me a number of little services and to meddle considerably with my affairs. But, beyond that, I doubt whether the small number of books he has read in his life has included anything written by me. I do not know whether he has a library, or whether it would be of any use to him if he had, and as for the bust, it got no further than a wretched clay model, made by Le Moine, from which he had a hideous print engraved, which nevertheless still circulates under my name as if it bore some resemblance to me.

  The only Frenchman who seemed to visit me out of a liking for my works and my opinions was a young officer of the Limousin regiment, M. Séguier de Saint-Brisson by name, who used to cut a brilliant figure in Paris and in the world, and perhaps still does, thanks to a few pleasant accomplishments and some pretensions to wit. He had visited me at Montmorency in the winter before my disaster, and I found a liveliness of feeling in him which pleased me. He afterwards wrote to me at Motiers; and either out of a wish to flatter me, or because his head was really turned by Émile, he informed me that he was resigning the service in order to live an independent life, and that he was learning the trade of carpenter. He had an elder brother, a captain in the same regiment, who monopolized his mother’s affection. She was a violently religious woman under the thumb of some hypocritical priest, and treated her younger son very badly, accusing him of irreligion, and also of the unpardonable crime of intimacy with me. These were the grievances which drove him to the point of breaking with his mother and taking the measures I have just mentioned: all in order to play the little Émile.