nal arrest. He
took up the thread where harassing circumstances had broken it, and
again fell musing over the tragic tale of the Levite of Ephraim. His
dream absorbed him so entirely as to take specific literary form, and
before the journey was at an end he had composed a long impassioned
version of the Bible story. Though it has Rousseau's usual fine
sonorousness in a high degree, no man now reads it; the author himself
always preserved a certain tenderness for it.[95] The contrast
between this singular quietism and the angry stir that marked
Voltaire's many flights in post-chaises, points like all else to the
profound difference between the pair. Contrast with Voltaire's shrill
cries under any personal vexation, this calm utterance:--"Though the
consequences of this affair have plunged me into a gulf of woes from
which I shall never come up again so long as I live, I bear these
gentlemen no grudge. I am aware that their object was not to do me any
harm, but only to reach ends of their own. I know that towards me they
have neither liking nor hate. I was found in their way, like a pebble
that you thrust aside with the foot without even looking at it. They
ought not to say they have performed their duty, but that they have
done their business."[96] A new note from a persecuted writer.

Rousseau, in spite of the belief which henceforth possessed him that
he was the victim of a dark unfathomable plot, and in spite of passing
outbreaks of gloomy rage, was incapable of steady glowing and active
resentments. The world was not real enough to him for this. A throng
of phantoms pressed noiselessly before his sight, and dulled all sense
of more actual impression. "It is amazing," he wrote, "with what ease
I forget past ill, however fresh it may be. In proportion as the
anticipation of it alarms and confuses me when I see it coming, so
the memory of it returns feebly to my mind and dies out the moment
after it has arrived. My cruel imagination, which torments itself
incessantly in anticipating woes that are still unborn, makes a
diversion for my memory, and hinders me from recalling those which
have gone. I exhaust disaster beforehand. The more I have suffered in
foreseeing it, the more easily do I forget it; while on the contrary,
being incessantly busy with my past happiness, I recall it and brood
and ruminate over it, so as to enjoy it over again whenever I
wish."[97] The same turn of humour saved him from vindictiveness. "I
c