Never was so much good wit expended in the desire to make beasts of us; one feels disposed to walk on all fours when one reads your work.

However, as it is more than sixty years since I lost the knack, I unfortunately find it impossible to recover it, and I leave that natural gait to those who are better fitted for it than you or I.

No more can I embark upon a visit to the savages of Canada, first, because the illnesses to which I am subject render a European doctor necessary to me; secondly, because war has been introduced into that country, and because the examples of our nations have rendered the savages almost as wicked as ourselves.

I shall confine myself to being a peaceable savage in the solitude I have selected hard by your own country, where you ought to be." Rousseau had, indeed, thought of returning and settling at Geneva.

In 1754, during a trip he made thither, he renounced the Catholic faith which he had embraced at sixteen under the influence of Madame de Warens, without any more conviction than he carried with him in his fresh abjuration.