even to the pitch of
imprudence. The aspect of the most hideous monster would alarm me
little, I verily believe; but if I discern at night a figure in a
white sheet, I am sure to be terrified out of my life."[85] So he at
once fancied that by some means the Jesuits had got possession of his
book, and knowing him to be at death's door, designed to keep the
Emilius back until he was actually dead, when they would publish a
truncated version of it to suit their own purposes.[86] He wrote
letter upon letter to the printer, to Malesherbes, to Madame de
Luxembourg, and if answers did not come, or did not come exactly when
he expected them, he grew delirious with anxiety. If he dropped his
conviction that the Jesuits were plotting the ruin of his book and the
defilement of his reputation, he lost no time in fastening a similar
design upon the Jansenists, and when the Jansenists were acquitted,
then the turn of the philosophers came. We have constantly to remember
that all this time the unfortunate man was suffering incessant pain,
and passing his nights in sleeplessness and fever. He sometimes threw
off the black dreams of unfathomable suspicion, and dreamed in their
stead of some sunny spot in pleasant Touraine, where under a mild
climate and among a gentle people he should peacefully end his
days.[87] At other times he was fond of supposing M. de Luxembourg
not a duke, nor a marshal of France, but a good country squire living
in some old mansion, and himself not an author, not a maker of books,
but with moderate intelligence and slight attainment, finding with the
squire and his dame the happiness of his life, and contributing to the
happiness of theirs.[88] Alas, in spite of all his precautions, he had
unwittingly drifted into the stream of great affairs. He and his book
were sacrificed to the exigencies of faction; and a persecution set
in, which destroyed his last chance of a composed life, by giving his
reason, already disturbed, a final blow from which it never recovered.

Emilius appeared in the crisis of the movement against the Jesuits.
That formidable order had offended Madame de Pompadour by a refusal to
recognise her power and position,--a manly policy, as creditable to
their moral vigour as it was contrary to the maxims which had made
them powerful. They had also offended Choiseul by the part they had
taken in certain hostile intrigues at Versailles. The parliaments had
always been their enemies. This was due fi