to conquer, any more than the supposed object of them ever bore him
any ill-will for his indifference, as in his mania of suspicion he
afterwards believed.

There was a calm about the too few years he passed at Montmorency,
which leaves us in doubt whether this mania would ever have afflicted
him, if his natural irritation had not been made intense and
irresistible by the cruel distractions that followed the publication
of Emilius. He was tolerably content with his present friends. The
simplicity of their way of dealing with him contrasted singularly, as
he thought, with the never-ending solicitudes, as importunate as they
were officious, of the patronising friends whom he had just cast
off.[15] Perhaps, too, he was soothed by the companionship of persons
whose rank may have flattered his vanity, while unlike Diderot and his
old literary friends in Paris, they entered into no competition with
him in the peculiar sphere of his own genius. Madame de Boufflers,
indeed, wrote a tragedy, but he told her gruffly enough that it was a
plagiarism from Southerne's Oroonoko.[16] That Rousseau was
thoroughly capable of this pitiful emotion of sensitive literary
jealousy is proved, if by nothing else, by his readiness to suspect
that other authors were jealous of him. No one suspects others of a
meanness of this kind unless he is capable of it himself. The
resounding success which followed the New Heloïsa and Emilius put an
end to these apprehensions. It raised him to a pedestal in popular
esteem as high as that on which Voltaire stood triumphant. That very
success unfortunately brought troubles which destroyed Rousseau's last
chance of ending his days in full reasonableness.

Meanwhile he enjoyed his final interval of moderate wholesomeness and
peace. He felt his old healthy joy in the green earth. One of the