"Five," answered he at once: " Newton, Bacon, Leibnitz, Montesquieu, and myself." This self-appreciation, fostered by the homage of his contemporaries, which showed itself in Buffon undisguisedly with an air of ingenuous satisfaction, had poisoned a life already extinguished ten years before amidst the bitterest agonies.

Taking up arms against a society in which he had not found his proper place, Jean Jacques Rousseau had attacked the present as well as the past, the Encyclopaedists as well as the old social organization.

It was from the first his distinctive trait to voluntarily create a desert around him.

The eighteenth century was in its nature easily seduced; liberal, generous, and open to allurements, it delighted in intellectual contentions, even the most dangerous and the most daring; it welcomed with alacrity all those who thus contributed to its pleasures.

The charming drawing-rooms of Madame Geoffrin, of Madame du Deffand, of Madlle.