a single
good thing. He rewarded the child's performance with the gift of a
superb suit of cherry-coloured velvet, extravagantly trimmed with costly
lace; the peasant from whose sweat and travail the money had been wrung,
went in heavy rags, and his children lived as the beasts of the field.
The poor youth was ill dealt with. "That is very fine," said rude
Duclos, "but remember that a fool in lace is still a fool." Rousseau, in
reply to the child's importunity, was still blunter: "Sir, I am no judge
of finery, I am only a judge of man; I wished to talk with you a little
while ago, but I wish so no longer."[220]

Marmontel, whose account may have been coloured by retrospection in
later years, says that before the success of the first Discourse,
Rousseau concealed his pride under the external forms of a politeness
that was timid even to obsequiousness; in his uneasy glance you
perceived mistrust and observant jealousy; there was no freedom in his
manner, and no one ever observed more cautiously the hateful precept to
live with your friends as though they were one day to be your
enemies.[221] Grimm's description is different and more trustworthy.
Until he began to affect singularity, he says, Rousseau had been gallant
and overflowing with artificial compliment, with manners that were
honeyed and even wearisome in their soft elaborateness. All at once he
put on the cynic's cloak, and went to the other extreme. Still in spite
of an abrupt and cynical tone he kept much of his old art of elaborate
fine speeches, and particularly in his relations with women.[222] Of his
abruptness, he tells a most displeasing tale. "One day Rousseau told us
with an air of triumph, that as he was coming out of the opera where he
had been seeing the first representation of the Village Soothsayer, the
Duke of Zweibruecken had approached him with much politeness, saying,
'Will you allow me to pay you a compliment?' and that he replied, 'Yes,
if it be very short.' Everybody was silent at this, until I said to him
laughingly, 'Illustrious citizen and co-sovereign of Geneva, since there
resides in you a part of the sovereignty of the republic, let me
represent to you that, for all the severity of your principles, you
should hardly refuse to a sovereign prince the respect due to a
water-carrier, and that if you had met a word of good-will from a
water-carrier with an answer as rough and brutal as that, you would have
had to reproach yourself with a mo