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suspicions, and asked whether he desired to quarrel withhim. Rousseau replied, with emotion, “ I should be sorryto see you too often, but still more sorry not to see you atall. 1 fear intimacies, and have closed my heart againstthem ; my temper masters me, do you not perceive it ?I suppress it for a time, but at last it overcomes me,and bursts forth in spite of my endeavours. I have myfaults ; but, when we value the friendship of any one,we must take the benefit with all its burdens.” SaintPierre adds, “ that these fits of distrust were rare, thathe was usually gay, confiding, and frank ; when I sawhim gloomy, I knew some sad thought perplexed him :I began talking of Plutarch , and he came to himself asif awakening from a dream.”
Saint Pierre gives a pleasing account of the respectin which- the Parisians held him. They went together tohear the “ Iphigenia ” of Gluck: the crowd and pressurewere great; Rousseau was old ; Saint Pierre felt desirousto name him, and so to obtain protection : he hesitated,fearful to offend ; at length he whispered it to one ortwo, begging them to keep the secret. Scarcely was theword uttered than a deep silence ensued, the crowdlooked respectfully on him, and emulated each other inshielding him from pressure, without any one repeatingthe name that had been revealed. At one time hesuspected Saint Pierre of being in league with his ene-mies ; his friend insisted on an explanation, and suc-ceeded in convincing him of his innocence, though hestill believed that his enemies had endeavoured to makea cat’s-paw of him.
He thus lived for some years in Paris , occupied bycopying music, and sometimes seized with a desire forcomposing it; herborising in the environs of the capital,seeing a few friends, and too often brooding in solitudeover the combination he believed formed against himthroughout Europe . As his health grew worse, theselast fatal ideas became more and more engrossing. Hequarrelled with Gluck for writing music to French words, saying that his only object was to give him the