EOUSSEAU. 169 



mere instruments of sensual pleasure, is certain from 

 his own account. But lie declares, with perfect so- 

 lemnity, that this passion was " la premiere et 1'unique 

 de toute sa vie."* The lady treated him with kindness, 

 apparently as a child ; his friend St. Lambert did not 

 much relish the matter, being unable to adopt his sin- 

 gular habit of several lovers at one and the same time 

 intimate with one mistress ; and she became in conse- 

 quence reserved and distant. An open quarrel took 

 place with Madame d'Epinay, her sister-in-law, like 

 many of Rousseau's quarrels, without any intelligible 

 ground, except his taking offence at something which 

 he had imagined, and then writing abusive letters. 

 He wrote to say he should leave 1'Ermitage ; she 

 answered that if he chose to do so he was welcome. 

 He replied that after such a hint he could not remain 

 a week. He removed to another house near Mont- 

 morency, and there he remained, taking very properly 

 the opportunity of this removal to get rid of Madame le 

 Vasseur, whom no entreaties of her daughter could 

 induce him to keep about him any longer. With 

 Grimm and Diderot he quarrelled irreconcileably ; and 

 his book is filled with attacks upon them both, but 

 especially upon Grimm. He charges them, as usual, 

 with a conspiracy, the overt acts of which were 

 their sometimes seeing and conversing with Theresa's 

 mother, the improper purpose of which he never could 

 describe, or even inform us what he suspected it to be. He 

 had some vague, half-crazy notion that they wanted to 

 direct and guide him, and to injure his fame and to 



* Conf., part ii. let. 9 : CEuv., i. p. 423. 



