Jean Jacques is a sick man with a good deal of wit, and one who only has wit when he has fever; he must neither be cured nor have his feelings hurt." Voltaire replied with haughty temper to these wise counsels, and the philosophers remained forever embroiled with Rousseau.
Isolated henceforth by the good as well as by the evil tendencies of his nature, Jean Jacques stood alone against the philosophical circle which he had dropped, as well as against the Protestant or Catholic clergy whose creeds he often offended.

He had just published _Le Contrat Social,_ "The Gospel,"; says M.Saint-Marc Girardin, "of the theory as to the sovereignty of the state representing the sovereignty of the people." The governing powers of the time had some presentiment of its danger; they had vaguely comprehended what weapons might be sought therein by revolutionary instincts and interests; their anxiety and their anger as yet brooded silently; the director of publications (_de la librairie_), M.de Malesherbes, was one of the friends and almost one of the disciples of Rousseau whom he shielded; he himself corrected the proofs of the _Emile_ which Rousseau had just finished.

The book had barely begun to appear, when, on the 8th of June, 1762, Rousseau was awakened by a message from la Marchale de Luxembourg: the Parliament had ordered _Emile_ to be burned, and its author arrested.

Rousseau took flight, reckoning upon finding refuge at Geneva.

The influence of the French government pursued him thither; the Grand Council condemned _Emile_.
One single copy had arrived at Geneva it was this which was burned by the hand of the common hangman, nine days after the, burning at Paris in the Place de Greve.