HERE commences the work of darkness, in which I have for the lasteight years been enveloped, though it has not by any means beenpossible for me to penetrate the dreadful obscurity.In the abyss ofevil into which I am plunged, I feel the blows reach me, withoutperceiving the hand by which they are directed or the means itemploys.Shame and misfortune seem of themselves to fall upon me.Whenin the affliction of my heart I suffer a groan to escape me, I havethe appearance of a man who complains without reason, and theauthors of my ruin have the inconceivable art of rendering the public,unknown to itself, or without its perceiving the effects of it,accomplice in their conspiracy.Therefore, in my narrative ofcircumstances relative to myself, of the treatment I have received,and all that has happened to me, I shall not be able to indicate thehand by which the whole has been directed, nor assign the causes,while I state the effect.The primitive causes are all given in thepreceding books; and everything in which I am interested, and allthe secret motives pointed out.But it is impossible for me toexplain, even by conjecture, that in which the different causes arecombined to operate the strange events of my life.If amongst myreaders one even of them should be generous enough to wish toexamine the mystery to the bottom, and discover the truth, let himcarefully read over a second time the three preceding books,afterwards at each fact he shall find stated in the books whichfollow, let him gain such information as is within his reach, and goback from intrigue to intrigue, and from agent to agent, until hecomes to the first mover of all.I know where his researches willterminate; but in the meantime I lose myself in the crooked andobscure subterraneous path through which his steps must be directed.
During my stay at Yverdon, I became acquainted with all the familyof my friend Roguin, and amongst others with his niece, Madam Boy dela Tour, and her daughters, whose father, as I think I have alreadyobserved, I formerly knew at Lyons.She was at Yverdon, upon a visitto her uncle and his sister; her eldest daughter, about fifteenyears of age, delighted me by her fine understanding and excellentdisposition.I conceived the most tender friendship for the mother andthe daughter.The latter was destined by M.Roguin to the colonel, hisnephew, a man already verging towards the decline of life, and whoshowed me marks of great esteem and affection; but although theheart of the uncle was set upon this marriage, which was much wishedfor by the nephew also, and I was greatly desirous to promote thesatisfaction of both, the great disproportion of age, and theextreme repugnancy of the young lady, made me join with the motherin postponing the ceremony, and the affair was at length broken off.
The colonel has since married Mademoiselle Dillan, his relation,beautiful, and amiable as my heart could wish, and who has made himthe happiest of husbands and fathers.However, M.Roguin has not yetforgotten my opposition to his wishes.My consolation is in thecertainty of having discharged to him, and his family, the duty of themost pure friendship, which does not always consist in beingagreeable, but in advising for the best.
I did not remain long in doubt about the reception which awaitedme at Geneva, had I chosen to return to that city.My book wasburned there, and on the 18th of June, nine days after an order toarrest me had been given at Paris, another to the same effect wasdetermined upon by the republic.So many incredible absurdities werestated in this second decree, in which the ecclesiastical edict wasformally violated, that I refused to believe the first accounts Iheard of it, and when these were well confirmed, I trembled lest somanifest an infraction of every law, beginning with that ofcommon-sense, should create the greatest confusion in the city.I was,however, relieved from my fears; everything remained quiet.If therewas any rumor amongst the populace, it was unfavorable to me, and Iwas publicly treated by all the gossips and pedants like a scholarthreatened with a flogging for not having said his catechi**.
These two decrees were the signal for the cry of malediction, raisedagainst me with unexampled fury in every part of Europe.All thegazettes, journals, and pamphlets, rang the alarm-bell.The Frenchespecially, that mild, generous, and polished people, who so muchpique themselves upon their attention and proper condescension tothe unfortunate, instantly forgetting their favorite virtues,signalized themselves by the number and violence of the outrageswith which, while each seemed to strive who should afflict me most,they overwhelmed me.I was impious, an atheist, a madman, a wildbeast, a wolf.The continuator of the Journal of Trevoux was guilty ofa piece of extravagance in attacking my pretended Lycanthropy, whichwas no mean proof of his own.A stranger would have thought anauthor in Paris was afraid of incurring the animadversion of thepolice, by publishing a work of any kind without cramming into it someinsult to me.I sought in vain the cause of this unanimousanimosity, and was almost tempted to believe the world was gone mad.
What! said I to myself, the editor of the Paix perpetuelle, spreaddiscord; the publisher of the Vicaire Savoyard, impious; the writer ofthe Nouvelle Heloise, a wolf; the author of Emile, a madman!
Gracious God! what then should I have been had I published thetreatise of l'Esprit, or any similar work? And yet, in the stormraised against the author of that book, the public, far from joiningthe cry of his persecutors, revenged him of them by eulogium.Lethis book and mine, the receptions the two works met with, and thetreatment of the two authors in the different countries of Europe,be compared; and for the difference let causes satisfactory to a manof sense be found, and I will ask no more.