Rousseau's Dog by David Edmonds Read Free Book Online

could not believe he was personally endangered. His patrons were more apprehensive. In the
Confessions,
he recalled that Mme de Boufflers, a friend of Mme de Luxembourg’s, “went about with a perturbed air, displaying a great deal of activity and assuring me that [her lover] the Prince de Conti was also taking active measures to ward off the blow that was being prepared for me.” Nonetheless, she asked Rousseau to return her note praising
Émile.
    Mme de Boufflers sought to persuade Rousseau to go to England, where she could introduce him to several acquaintances including the “celebrated Hume,” whom she had known for a long while. She pointed out that if he were arrested and interrogated, he might incriminate his current patron, Mme de Luxembourg. (Rousseau agreed he might, as he always told the truth.) She also floated the notion of arranging a spell for him in the Bastille—presumably in comfort—as prisoners of the state there were immune from the Paris parlement’s power of arrest. The prospect did not appeal.
    T HE EVENTS OF the night of June 9, 1762, in Mont-Louis make the most dramatic episode in the
Confessions.
They signaled that yet again the Genevan would have to move on—this time as the fugitive he would be for the next eight years.
    It was two in the morning. Rousseau was awake; he had just closed his Bible on the story of the Levite of Ephraim. Voices echoed, torches flared, and footsteps sounded in the stillness of the dark countryside. Mme de Luxembourg’s confidential servant, La Roche, burst in with a note from Mme de Luxembourg. It contained a letter from the Prince de Conti saying the Paris courts were determined to proceed against Rousseau with all severity: “The excitement is very high. Nothing can avert the blow.” Rousseau must go to Mme de Luxembourg, La Roche declared. She would not rest until she had seen him.
    Rousseau found her upset; he had never known her in such a state. But at this critical moment, he could rely on such influential friends tostave off his arrest. The maréchal arrived, trailed by Mme de Boufflers with the latest news from Paris. A writ of
prise de corps
had been issued against Rousseau by the parlement.
Émile
was ordered to be burned by the public executioner. However, Conti had secured a concession: if Rousseau escaped, he would not be pursued. He could even take a few days to think over his plans.
    Rousseau declined the breathing space. At four that afternoon he departed for Switzerland, riding in plain view in an open cabriolet belonging to the maréchal. His route took him through Paris, where he passed the officers of the law, “four men in black in a hired coach who saluted me with smiles.”
    He left Thérèse to follow him with his papers. It was the first time they had been separated for sixteen years.

5
Exile with the “Friendly Ones”
    Here begins the work of darkness in which I found myself engulfed.
    â€”R OUSSEAU, the
Confessions,

writing of the summer of 1762
    F ROM 1762 TO late 1765, Rousseau’s fate was to be shunted along the northern shore of Lake Neuchâtel, in a futile quest for a secure refuge.
    The proud citizen of Geneva deliberately avoided his home city. He believed it was too susceptible to French influence, a judgment that was vindicated almost immediately. On June 18, 1762, Geneva’s ruling body, the Petit Conseil, assembled to discuss his case, voting the next day that if he ever stepped inside the city he would be arrested. They orderedthe burning of
On the Social Contract,
as well as
Émile.
Helping to orchestrate the campaign against him was another member of the powerful Tronchin clan, Jean-Robert Tronchin, the prosecutor general in Geneva who had presented the case for suppressing the two books.
    Rousseau came to rest first in Yverdon, a spa town under the jurisdiction of Bern at the southern tip of the lake, on the edge of the triangle formed by