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mother he killed and whose children he exposed at the gates of an orphanage … abjuring all natural feelings even as he strips himself of honour and religion.”
    The butt of these calumnies remained profoundly shaken by their tone and content, but posterity can be grateful to Voltaire. To clear his name, Rousseau finally decided to publish a fully open account of his life, feelings, and motives, and so conceived the
Confessions.
(He had been procrastinating over an autobiography since his publisher suggested it in 1761.)
    In Môtiers, the local priest, who believed he had obtained a prior pledge from Rousseau that he would not publish anything contentious, now banned Rousseau from the next Communion, and went on in his sermons to whip up opinion against him as a heretic. He even (unsuccessfully) attempted to have Rousseau excommunicated. The villagers were turning against him; the atmosphere became increasingly threatening. Rousseau was abused in the street. In King Frederick’s name, Marischal issued an order to protect him: it was ignored.
    On September 1, 1765, Rousseau’s house was stoned, though no windows were broken. The next night there was an attempt to break downthe front door. The following week, on Friday, September 6, Môtiers held a fair with much drinking and rowdy merrymaking. Late at night, the house was attacked again, more violently than before, a terrifying experience as recollected in the
Confessions:
    A shower of stones was thrown against the window and the door which opens on to the gallery and they fell on to it with so much force that my dog, who usually slept there and had started to bark, fell silent with fright and escaped to a corner, gnawing and scratching at the floorboards in an effort to escape.
    A rock “as big as a head” nearly landed on Rousseau’s bed, and he and Thérèse huddled together by a far wall. So many stones were hurled at the house that when the local steward finally arrived, he declared, “My God. It’s a quarry.”
    All the local notables wanted him to go. “I gave in, and I took very little persuading; for the spectacle of the people’s hatred caused me such anguish that it was more than I could bear.” He and Sultan fled Môtiers, leaving Thérèse behind, and after one night with Du Peyrou in Neuchâtel, the philosopher and the dog arrived on Isle Saint-Pierre, in Lake Bienne, just beyond the city. The territory was under the jurisdiction of Bern.
    In his posthumously published
Rêveries,
Rousseau’s five weeks on Isle Saint-Pierre are portrayed as blissful, passed amid an Eden of orchards, meadows, vineyards, and woods, with a solitary dwelling. His chief balm was walking and botanizing—his ambition was to compile a list of all the island’s plant life. Rousseau and Sultan would ramble through a nearby island that was uninhabited, though Sultan disliked water and the boat journey made him nervous.
    Isle Saint-Pierre proved a short-lived sanctuary. Thérèse joined him in late September, but on October 18, “when I was least expecting it,” he received notice from the Bern authorities that he must leave theirterritory within two weeks. His plea to remain imprisoned on the island until his death, in return for being left in peace, was ignored. He told one correspondent that he was being “violently” expelled.
    Within three years, Rousseau had been driven from France, banned from Geneva, and forced out of Yverdon, Môtiers, and Isle Saint-Pierre. The king of Prussia’s protection had been to no avail. His enemies were triumphant. Europe’s foremost radical was on the run again.

6
The Lion and Le Coq
    The newspapers have given the rage of going to Paris a good name; they call it the
French disease.
—H ORACE W ALPOLE, October 1763
    His features were covered with mask within mask. When the outer disguise of obvious affectation was removed, you were still as far