f men to whom he should be a
father; then will J.J. Rousseau, the foe of kings, hasten to die at
the foot of his throne."[116] Frederick, strong as his interest was in
all curious persons who could amuse him, was too busy to answer this,
and Rousseau was not yet recognised as Voltaire's rival in power and
popularity.

Motiers is one of the half-dozen decent villages standing in the flat
bottom of the Val de Travers, a widish valley that lies between the
gorges of the Jura and the Lake of Neuchatel, and is famous in our day
for its production of absinthe and of asphalt. The flat of the valley,
with the Reuss making a bald and colourless way through the midst of
it, is nearly treeless, and it is too uniform to be very pleasing. In
winter the climate is most rigorous, for the level is high, and the
surrounding hills admit the sun's rays late and cut them off early.
Rousseau's description, accurate and recognisable as it is,[117]
strikes an impartial tourist as too favourable. But when a piece of
scenery is a home to a man, he has an eye for a thousand outlines,
changes of light, soft variations of colour; the landscape lives for
him with an unspoken suggestion and intimate association, to all of
which the swift passing stranger is very cold.

His cottage, which is still shown, was in the midst of the other
houses, and his walks, which were at least as important to him as the
home in which he dwelt, lay mostly among woody heights with streaming
cascades. The country abounded in natural curiosities of a humble
sort, and here that interest in plants which had always been strong in
him, began to grow into a passion. Rousseau had so curious a feeling
about them, that when in his botanical expeditions he came across a
single flower of its kind, he could never bring himself to pluck it.
His sight, though not good for distant objects, was of the very finest
for things held close; his sense of smell was so acute and subtle
that, according to a good witness, he might have classified plants by
odours, if language furnished as many names as nature supplies
varieties of fragrance.[118] He insisted in all botanising and other
walking excursions on going bareheaded, even in the heat of the
dog-days; he declared that the action of the sun did him good. When
the days began to turn, the summer was straightway at an end for him:
"My imagination," he said, in a phrase which went further through his
life than he supposed, "at once brings win