ROUSSEAU (Jean-Jacques). Autograph letter signed "JJRousseau - Lot 192

ROUSSEAU (Jean-Jacques). Autograph letter signed "JJRousseau" to the Marquis de Beffroi. Ferme Monquin à Maubec [near present-day Bourgoin-Jallieu in the département of Isère], March 16, 1770. One p. in-4, envelope preserved with red wax seal with antique lyre motif. "Madame la marquise enriches a very cold place with the treasures of Provence, I beg you, Monsieur, to convey to her the thanks of my wife [Thérèse Levasseur, a long-time companion whom he had just married on August 30, 1768] and my own. I knew nothing of your disaster when you were kind enough to inform me of it. I take, I assure you, every possible interest in it, and it seems to me that I am even less distressed by the theft than indignant at the insult. I hope that the thieves will be discovered and punished as they deserve, but I'm afraid that won't help you recover the stolen goods. I don't know how much longer the snow that makes our roads impassable to carriages will keep me a prisoner here. I would welcome this setback if it meant I succumbed to the temptation of going to Bourgoin once again to pay my respects to you and Madame. That if I do not have this happiness, I beg you at least once again, Monsieur, to be persuaded that we shall leave, my wife and I, with our hearts full of his kindnesses and yours, and that if it is given to me to be able to renew to you sometimes the assurances of the tender and lasting memory that we shall keep of him, I shall count this advantage among those that can flatter me the most..." As in many of his letters from 1770 onwards, Rousseau included the following quatrain at the beginning: "Poor blind men that we are! Unmask the impostors/ And force their barbarous hearts/ To open up to the gaze of men." Rousseau in Dauphiné: Confessions, botany and music. Benefiting from the protection of the military governor of Bourgoin, Marquis Louis-Jacques-Marie de Beffroi de LaGrange-aux-Bois (from a family allied to the Montmorency family), Jean-Jacques Rousseau stayed in the town from August 13, 1768 to the end of January 1769, under the name Renou. In January 1769, he retired to the Montquin farm in the village of Maubec, near Bourgoin, where he remained until April 1770. During this time, he planted trees, played music and worked on his Confessions.