s he did into the Encyclopaedia. We have already seen how
warmly he rated Jean Jacques for missing the court pension. Then he
scolded and laughed at him for turning hermit. With still more
seriousness he remonstrated with him for remaining in the country
through the winter, thus endangering the life of Theresa's aged mother.
This stirred up hot anger in the Hermitage, and two or three bitter
letters were interchanged,[291] those of Diderot being pronounced by a
person who was no partisan of Rousseau decidedly too harsh.[292] Yet
there is copious warmth of friendship in these very letters, if only the
man to whom they were written had not hated interference in his affairs
as the worst of injuries. "I loved Diderot tenderly, I esteemed him
sincerely," says Rousseau, "and I counted with entire confidence upon
the same sentiments in him. But worn out by his unwearied obstinacy in
everlastingly thwarting my tastes, my inclinations, my ways of living,
everything that concerned myself only; revolted at seeing a younger man
than myself insist with all his might on governing me like a child;
chilled by his readiness in giving his promise and his negligence in
keeping it; tired of so many appointments which he made and broke, and
of his fancy for repairing them by new ones to be broken in their turn;
provoked at waiting for him to no purpose three or four times a month on
days which he had fixed, and of dining alone in the evening, after going
on as far as St. Denis to meet him and waiting for him all day,--I had
my heart already full of a multitude of grievances."[293] This
irritation subsided in presence of the storms that now rose up against
Diderot. He was in the thick of the dangerous and mortifying
distractions stirred up by the foes of the Encyclopaedia. Rousseau in
friendly sympathy went to see him; they embraced, and old wrongs were
forgotten until new arose.[294]

There is a less rose-coloured account than this. Madame d'Epinay assigns
two motives to Rousseau: a desire to find an excuse for going to Paris,
in order to avoid seeing Saint Lambert; secondly, a wish to hear
Diderot's opinion of the two first parts of the New Heloisa. She says
that he wanted to borrow a portfolio in which to carry the manuscripts
to Paris; Rousseau says that they had already been in Diderot's
possession for six months.[295] As her letters containing this very
circumstantial story were written at the moment, it is difficult to
uphold the Conf