Diderot of some sixteen pounds a year. 1 Rousseau
was unaware of this, but the whisperings and goings
and comings to which it gave rise, made him darkly
uneasy. That the suspicions in other respects were
in a certain sense not wholly unfounded, is shown by
Grimm's own letters to Madame d'Epinay. He dis-
approved of her installing Rousseau in the Hermitage,
and warned her in a very remarkable prophecy that
solitude would darken his imagination. 2 "He is a
poor devil who torments himself, and does not dare to
confess the true subject of all his sufferings, which is
in his cursed head and his pride ; he raises up imagin-
ary matters, so as to have the pleasure of complain-
ing of the whole human race." 3 More than once he
assures her that Rousseau will end by going mad, it
being impossible ' that so hot and ill-organised a head
should endure solitude. 4 Rousseauite partisans usually
explain all this by supposing that Grimm was eager to
set a woman for whom he had a passion, against a
man who was suspected of having a passion for her ;
and it is possible that jealousy may have stimulated
the exercise of his natural shrewdness. But this
shrewdness, added to entire want of imagination and
a very narrow range of sympathy, was quite enough
to account for Grimm's harsh judgment, without the
addition of any sinister sentiment. He was perfectly
right in suspecting Rousseau of want of loyalty to

1 D'Epinay, ii. 150. Also Vandeul's Mim. de Diderot, p. 61.
2 M&m. ii. 128.
3 P. 258. See also p. 146. 4 Pp. 282*336, etc.
