ogue, I plucked up so much, that I should have been quite intrepid if
there had been any need of it. But, whether it were the effect of the
master's presence or natural kindness of heart, I observed nothing but
what was obliging and civil in the curiosity of which I was the object.
I was steeled against all their gibes, but their caressing air, which I
had not expected, overcame me so completely, that I trembled like a child
when things began. I heard all about me a whispering of women who seemed
to me as beautiful as angels, and who said to one another below their
breath, 'This is charming, this is enchanting: there is not a note that
does not appeal to the heart.' The, pleasure of causing emotion in so
many lovable persons moved me myself to tears."

The emotions of the eighteenth century were vivid and easily roused;
fastening upon everything without any earnest purpose, and without any
great sense of responsibility, it grew as hot over a musical dispute as
over the gravest questions of morality or philosophy. Grimm had attacked
French music, Rousseau supported his thesis by a _Lettre sur la Musique_.
It was the moment of the great quarrel between the Parliament and the
clergy. "When my letter appeared, there was no more excitement save
against me," says Rousseau; "it was such that the nation has never
recovered from it. When people read that this pamphlet probably
prevented a revolution in the state, they will fancy they must be
dreaming." And Grimm adds in his correspondence: "The Italian actors who
have been playing for the last ten months on the stage of the Opera de
Paris and who are called here bouffons, have so absorbed the attention of
Paris that the Parliament, in spite of all its measures and proceedings
which should have earned it celebrity, could not but fall into complete
oblivion. A wit has said that the arrival of Manelli saved us from a
civil war; and Jean Jacques Rousseau of Geneva, whom his friends have
dubbed the citizen of citizens (_le citoyen par excellence_), that
eloquent and bilious foe of the sciences, has just set fire to the four
corners of Paris with a _Lettre sur la Musique,_ in which he proves that
it is impossible to set French words to music. . . . What is not easy
to believe, and is none the less true for all that, is that M. Rousseau
was afraid of being banished for this pamphlet. It would have been odd
to see Rousseau banished for having spoken ill of French music, after