ABSTRACT
The last weeks of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s stay at the Hermitage were weeks of anguish. Diderot-Danton went to see him at the instigation of “Baron d'Holbach’s crew” in order to make a final effort towards a reconciliation, and found him in a state of cold fury, nursing a suppressed but overpowering rage which seemed to him terrible. “Diderot-Danton already had a vision of Rousseau-Robespierre,” wrote Michelet rhetorically. But the truth was not that the “bear” in his solitude was plotting against the Encyclopaedists. In exposing Monsieur de Voltaire’s sly move to open the way for the representation of his own tragedies near Ferney, while he persuaded himself that he was only doing his duty, was satisfying his personal animosity. The geniality of the Marshal, unspoiled by his merely moderate intelligence, and mingled with a little shyness, delighted Jean-Jacques no less. Madame de la Tour de Franqueville, one of Jean-Jacques’s admirers, wrote him confidential letters, at first anonymously, signing herself “Claire d’Orbe.”
