ess upon the duty of obeying the laws set
up by the prince. The writer cannot venture to run any risk by
interceding in favour of our brethren with the government. "Every one
has his own calling upon the earth; mine is to tell the public harsh
but useful truths. I have preached humanity, gentleness, tolerance, so
far as it depended upon me; 'tis no fault of mine if the world has not
listened. I have made it a rule to keep to general truths; I produce
no libels, no satires; I attack no man, but men; not an action, but a
vice."[22] The worst of the worthy sort of people, wrote Voltaire, is
that they are such cowards: a man groans over a wrong, he holds his
tongue, he takes his supper, and he forgets all about it.[23] If
Voltaire could not write like Fenelon, at least he could never talk
like Tartufe; he responded to no tale of wrong with words about his
mission, with strings of antitheses, but always with royal anger and
the spring of alert and puissant endeavour. In an hour of oppression
one would rather have been the friend of the saviour of the Calas and
of Sirven, than of the vindicator of theism.

Rousseau, however, had good sense enough in less equivocal forms than
this. For example, in another letter he remonstrates with a
correspondent for judging the rich too harshly. "You do not bear in
mind that having from their childhood contracted a thousand wants
which we are without, then to bring them down to the condition of the
poor, would be to make them more miserable than the poor. We should be
just towards all the world, even to those who are not just to us. Ah,
if we had the virtues opposed to the vices which we reproach in them,
we should soon forget that such people were in the world. One word
more. To have any right to despise the rich, we ought ourselves to be
prudent and thrifty, so as to have no need of riches."[24] In the
observance of this just precept Rousseau was to the end of his life
absolutely without fault. No one was more rigorously careful to make
his independence sure by the fewness of his wants and by minute
financial probity. This firm limitation of his material desires was
one cause of his habitual and almost invariable refusal to accept
presents, though no doubt another cause was the stubborn and
ungracious egoism which made him resent every obligation.

It is worth remembering in illustration of the peculiar susceptibility
and softness of his character where women were concerned--it was not