reigner, but the French
bookseller who stood practically in Rey's place. It was setting two
French booksellers to ruin one another. Rousseau emphatically declined
to receive any profit from such a transaction. But, said Malesherbes,
you sold to Rey a right which you had not got, the right of sole
proprietorship, excluding the competition of a pirated reprint. Then,
answered Rousseau, if the right which I sold happens to prove less
than I thought, it is clear that far from taking advantage of my
mistake, I owe to Rey compensation for any loss that he may
suffer.[81]

The friendship of Malesherbes for the party of reason was shown on
numerous occasions. As director of the book trade he was really the
censor of the literature of the time.[82] The story of his service to
Diderot is well known--how he warned Diderot that the police were
about to visit his house and overhaul his papers, and how when Diderot
despaired of being able to put them out of sight in his narrow
quarters, Malesherbes said, "Then send them all to me," and took care
of them until the storm was overpast. The proofs of the New Heloisa
came through his hands, and now he made himself Rousseau's agent in
the affairs relative to the printing of Emilius. Rousseau entrusted
the whole matter to him and to Madame de Luxembourg, being confident
that, in acting through persons of such authority and position, he
should be protected against any unwitting illegality. Instead of being
sent to Rey, the manuscript was sold to a bookseller in Paris for six
thousand francs.[83] A long time elapsed before any proofs reached the
author, and he soon perceived that an edition was being printed in
France as well as in Holland. Still, as Malesherbes was in some sort
the director of the enterprise, the author felt no alarm. Duclos came
to visit him one day, and Rousseau read aloud to him the Savoyard
Vicar's Profession of Faith. "What, citizen," he cried, "and that is
part of a book that they are printing at Paris! Be kind enough not to
tell any one that you read this to me."[84] Still Rousseau remained
secure. Then the printing came to a standstill, and he could not find
out the reason, because Malesherbes was away, and the printer did not
take the trouble to answer his letters. "My natural tendency," he
says, and as the rest of his life only too abundantly proved, "is to
be afraid of darkness; mystery always disturbs me, it is utterly
antipathetic to my character, which is open