ABSTRACT
Jean-Jacques Rousseau's body was taken to the Pantheon on October n, 1794, but for the author his spirit still abides on the Island of Poplars, where the Marquis de Girardin had him buried and erected his mausoleum. The wretched author of the Confessions, after his turbulent life, was not to find peace even in death. He was hardly cold before his corpse was carved open, for in order to put all suspicions at rest, his host insisted on an immediate autopsy. This revealed a slight scar on the forehead, and two negligible hernias of the groin; in his stomach was nothing but the coffee he had drunk. No trace was discovered in his bladder of the disease from which he had suffered. On the other hand, the watery discharge on his brain proved that he had died of an apoplectic shock. On December 18, 1897, the government of the French Republic ordered the coffin to be opened.
