ote,
speaking of the exile, "I give you my word that if this blackguard
(_polisson_) of a Jean Jacques should dream of coming (to Geneva), he
would run great risk of mounting a ladder which would not be that of
Fortune." At the very same time Rousseau was saying, "What have I done
to bring upon myself the persecution of M. de Voltaire? And what worse
have I to fear from him? Would M. de Buffon have me soften this tiger
thirsting for my blood? He knows very well that nothing ever appeases or
softens the fury of tigers; if I were to crawl upon the ground before
Voltaire, he would triumph thereat, no doubt, but he would rend me none
the less. Basenesses would dishonor me, but would not save me. Sir, I
can suffer, I hope to learn how to die, and he who knows how to do that
has never need to be a dastard."

Rousseau was high-flown and tragic; Voltaire was cruel in his
contemptuous levity; but the contrast between the two philosophers was
even greater in the depths of them than on. the surface. Rousseau took
his own words seriously, even when he was mad, and his conduct was sure
to belie them before long. He was the precursor of an impassioned and
serious age, going to extremes in idea and placing deeds after words.
In spite of occasional reticence dictated by sound sense, Voltaire had
abandoned himself entirely in his old age to that school of philosophy,
young, ardent, full of hope and illusions, which would fain pull down
everything before it knew what it could set up, and the actions of which
were not always in accordance with principles. "The men were inferior to
their ideas." President De Brosses was justified in writing to Voltaire,
"I only wish you had in your heart a half-quarter of the morality and
philosophy contained in your works." Deprived of the counterpoise of
political liberty, the emancipation of thought in the reign of Louis XV.
had become at one and the same time a danger and a source of profound
illusions; people thought that they did what they said, and that they
meant what they wrote, but the time of actions and consequences had not
yet come; Voltaire applauded the severities against Rousseau, and still
he was quite ready to offer him an asylum at Ferney; he wrote to
D'Alembert, "I am engaged in sending a priest to the galleys," at the
very moment when he was bringing eternal honor to his name by the
generous zeal which led him to protect the memory and the family of the
unfortunate people n