[* The head of the corporation.]
* La Nouvelle Héloïse.
* Institutions politiques.
[* Theodore Tronchin (1709–81).]
[† On 26 August 1755.]
* Here is an example of the tricks my memory plays with me. Long after writing this I have just learned, while talking to my wife about her dear old father, that it was not M. d’Holbach, but M. de Chenonceaux, then one of the governors of the Hôtel-Dieu, who found him the place. I had so completely forgotten the incident, and had such a vivid memory of M. d’Holbach that I would have sworn it was he.
* It was Duclos’s wise severity that I particularly feared. As for Diderot, all my talks with him always tended, I do not know why, to make me more satirical and caustic than I was by nature. It was that which deterred me from consulting him on an enterprise in which I meant to employ solely the power of reason, without any vestige of venom or prejudice. The tone which I adopted for this work can be judged by that of The Social Contract, which derives from it.
[* Charles-Irénée Castel, abbé de Saint-Pierre (1658–1743), originator of various economic theories.]
* La Morale sensitive ou le Matérialisme du sage.
[* No doubt her affair with M. de Francueil, mentioned in Book Seven.]
[* Which was submitted to devastating criticism in Molière’s play.]
† La Paix perpétuelle.
‡ Polysynodie
[* Persons whose duty it was to conduct ambassadors and foreign princes to Royal audiences.]
* I am surprised now at my stupidity in not having seen when, I wrote this that the Holbach circle’s annoyance at seeing me go into the country and stay there was chiefly because they now no longer had Mme Le Vasseur at hand to guide them in their system of intrigues with reliable information about times and places. This idea occurs to me late, but perfectly explains the oddness of their conduct, which is inexplicable under any other hypothesis.
[* In The New Héloïse.]
* It was really Mme Le Vasseur whom they wished to entice away, since they required her for their conspiracy. It is astonishing that during the whole of this prolonged storm, my stupid confidence prevented my seeing that it was not myself but her that they wanted to bring back to Paris.
[* This was a nickname jestingly bestowed by Grimm on Mme d’Épinay’s son.]
* Le Père de famille.
[* These letters have never been found.]
* I have since learnt that these words were by Santeuil, and that M. de Linant had quietly appropriated them.
[* A character in Destouches’s comedy The Man of Conceit (Le Glorieux).]
[* A further reference to Destouches’s comedy.]
[* The hero of one of those romances of chivalry derided in Don Quixote.]
[* Character in Molière’s comedy of that name: a peasant who married a grand lady.]
* It was not until much later – long after he had declared his hostility to me, and stirred up cruel persecutions against me at Geneva and elsewhere – that I nicknamed the latter ‘The Juggler’. Indeed I very soon suppressed this name when I saw that I was completely a victim to him. Paltry vengeance is beneath me. and hatred has never gained a foothold in my heart.
[* The Hanging Judge (Le Lieutenant criminel) was Mme Le Vasseur's nickname, but here it seems to be applied to Thérèse.]
[* One of the Ladrone group in the Pacific]
* I confess that since this book was written, what I have glimpsed through the darkness that surrounds me makes me fear that I did not know Diderot.
† Since this was written he has come into the open with the most complete and inconceivable success. I believe that it is Tronchin who gave him the courage and the means to do so.
[* Nicolas de Catinat, one of Louis XIV's marshals.]
* The Address on Human Inequality.
* Or so I still thought, in the simplicity of my heart when I wrote my Confessions.
* It now belongs to them by a new agreement which they made with me quite recently.
[* Panurge outwitted the merchant in a crooked bargain, and chose his best sheep and threw it into the sea. It was followed by the whole flock, who carried Dindenaut with them. See Rabelais’s Pantagruel, Book IV, chapters 6 and 7.]
* When I wrote this I was full of my old blind confidence and far from suspecting the real motive and result of his visit to Paris.
* L’Impertinent.
[† Chrétien-Guillaume de Lamoignon de Malesherbes (1721–94), Rousseau’s chief protector, and a victim of the Revolution. He died on the scaffold.]
[* The Countess de Boufflers, mistress of the Prince de Conti.]
† Le Journal des Savants.
[* Charles-FranÇois-Frédéric de Montmorency, Marshal and Duke de Luxembourg (1702–64).]
* The loss of an important battle, which greatly upset the King, compelled M. de Luxembourg to return hurriedly to Court.
* Whom Jupiter wishes to ruin he first makes mad.
* I made the verses; another man takes the credit.
* Étienne de Silhouette (1709–67), Controller general of Finance.
* Les Philosophes.
* La Vision.
† This letter with several others disappeared from the Hôtel de Luxembourg when my papers were stored there.
* Farewell, and love me.
* Which is what he subsequently did to Emile.
* That is to say during his lifetime and mine; and surely the utmost scrupulosity, especially in dealing with a man who tramples all scruples underfoot, cannot demand more.
* It will be observed that, although this letter was written almost seven years ago, I have never spoken of it or shown it to a living soul. The same was true of the two letters which Mr Hume forced me to write to him last summer, until he made the fuss about them which everyone knows of. The evil I have had to say of my enemies I have told them in private to their faces; the good, when there is any, I say openly and with a glad heart.
† Observe how my blind and stupid confidence persisted through all my persecutions, which should have cured me of it. It never left me till after my return to Paris in 1770.
* I wrote this in 1769.
[* Novel by Mme de Lafayette.]
[† Rousseau probably means England.]
* It was not she, but another lady whose name I do not know; but I have been assured that the tale is true.
* Le Monde.
* Absurdities.
[* The alliance of 1761 between the Bourbons of France and Spain.]
* L’Esclave généreux.
[† An adaptation by T. Southerne of Mrs Aphra Behn’s novel.]
[* On the outskirts of Paris, where the dues (01 octroi) were collected.]
* When I wrote this I was far from imagining or conceiving, and still more from believing in the frauds I have since discovered in the printing of my works, frauds which he has been forced to admit.
* I knew, for instance, that the President of— was on very close terms with the Encyclopaedists and the d’Holbach circle.
[* The Seven Years War.]
[† Those of the Duke de Choiseul]
[* The Parlement.]
* The country gentle, pleasant, and delightful produces inhabitants like itself (Tasso).
[* Salomon Gessner, Swiss poet and landscape painter (1730–88).]
[* A Jesuit newspaper.]
* L’Esprit des bis, by Montesquieu.
† A feudal landowner, who originally had sufficient vassals to raise a standard.
[* ‘Glory and self-regard to him are God and law.’ This line is said to have been written on the back, not on the face of the print: which somewhat upsets Rousseau’s story.]
[* George Keith (1685–1778).]
[* Peace be with you (Arabic).]
* I had found in his Elements of Music a great deal taken from the articles I had written on music for the Encyclopaedia, and which I had delivered to him some years before the publication of his Elements. I do no
t know what share he may have had in a book entitled The Dictionary of the Fine Arts, but in it I have found articles copied from mine word for word, and that long before those same articles were printed in the Encyclopaedia.
[* A cousin of Rousseau’s old enemy, the doctor.]
† The earth kept silence.
* Lettres écrites de la montagne.
[* In the Second Book.]
[* In Paris, together with Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary.]
[* David Hume (1711–76), Scottish philosopher, and afterwards Rousseau’s host in England.]
* This trouble had begun when I was staying at Yverdun. For when Roguin the Banneret died, a year or two after I left the town, old Papa Roguin was so honest as to tell me, with regret, that among his relative’s papers had been found proofs that he had joined in the conspiracy to expel me from Yverdun and the State of Berne. This clearly proved that the plot was not, as they wished me to believe, a matter of religious cant. For Roguin the Banneret, far from being a fervid churchman, carried his materialism and unbelief to the point of fanatical intolerance. Besides, no one at Yverdun had taken me up so completely, had made such a fuss of me with his praises and flatteries as this same Roguin. He was loyally following the favourite plan of my persecutors.
[* One of the rivers of the infernal regions.]
* Vineyards on the Rhône.
† It is perhaps worth mentioning that I left a special enemy behind me, a M. du Terraux, mayor of Verrières, who was not much respected in his district, but who has a brother, said to be an honourable man, in M. de Saint-Florentin's office. The mayor had paid him a visit some time before my adventures. Slight observations of this kind, which are nothing in themselves, are capable of subsequently leading to the discovery of much underground plotting.
[* A name invented by Rabelais for the retreat of the Papal court.]
[* See above, Book Five.]
[* Pascalo Paoli (1726–1807), one of the Corsican leaders, who died in exile in London.]
[* Which were never written.]
[† Mme de Boufflers and Mme de Verdelin.]
[‡ David Hume.]
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions
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