he is pestered with anonymous letters."[123]

Some of these were of a humour that disclosed the master hand.
Voltaire had been universally suspected of stirring up the feeling of
Geneva against its too famous citizen,[124] though for a man of less
energy the affair of the Calas, which he was now in the thick of,
might have sufficed. Voltaire's letters at this time show how hard he
found it in the case of Rousseau to exercise his usual pity for the
unfortunate. He could not forget that the man who was now tasting
persecution had barked at philosophers and stage-plays; that he was a
false brother, who had fatuously insulted the only men who could take
his part; that he was a Judas who had betrayed the sacred cause.[125]
On the whole, however, we ought probably to accept his word, though
not very categorically given,[126] that he had nothing to do with the
action taken against Rousseau. That action is quite adequately
explained, first by the influence of the resident of France at Geneva,
which we know to have been exerted against the two fatal books,[127]
and second by the anxiety of the oligarchic party to keep out of their
town a man whose democratic tendencies they now knew so well and so
justly dreaded.[128] Moultou, a Genevese minister, in the full tide
of devotion and enthusiasm for the author of Emilius, met Voltaire at
the house of a lady in Geneva. All will turn out well, cried the
patriarch; "the syndics will say M. Rousseau, you have done ill to
write what you have written; promise for the future to respect the
religion of your country. Jean Jacques will promise, and perhaps he
will say that the printer took the liberty of adding a sheet or two to
his book." "Never," cried the ardent Moultou; "Jean Jacques never puts
his name to works to disown them after."[129] Voltaire disowned his
own books with intrepid and sustained mendacity, yet he bore no grudge
to Moultou for his vehemence. He sent for him shortly afterwards,
professed an extreme desire to be reconciled with Rousseau, and would
talk of nothing else. "I swear to you," wrote Moultou, "that I could
not understand him the least in the world; he is a marvellous actor; I
could have sworn that he loved you."[130] And there really was no
acting in it. The serious Genevese did not see that he was dealing
with "one all fire and fickleness, a child."

Rousseau soon found out that he had excited not only the band of
professed unbelievers, but also the tormenting w