Editing Jean-Jacques Rousseau (section)

===In Grenoble===
On 22 May 1767, Rousseau reentered France even though an arrest warrant against him was still in place. He had taken an assumed name, but was recognized, and a banquet in his honor was held by the city of [[Amiens]]. French nobles offered him a residence at this time. Initially, Rousseau decided to stay in an estate near Paris belonging to [[Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau|Mirabeau]]. Subsequently, on 21 June 1767, he moved to a chateau of the Prince of Conti in [[Trie-Château|Trie]].{{sfn|Damrosch|2005|pp=447–448}}

Around this time, Rousseau started developing feelings of paranoia, anxiety, and of a conspiracy against him. Most of this was just his imagination at work, but on 29 January 1768, the theatre at Geneva was destroyed through burning, and Voltaire mendaciously accused Rousseau of being the culprit. In June 1768, Rousseau left Trie, leaving Thérèse behind, and went first to [[Lyon]], and subsequently to [[Bourgoin-Jallieu|Bourgoin]]. He now invited Thérèse to this place and ''married'' her,{{NoteTag|Rousseau and Thérèse le Vasseur were not legally married nor married in church. A faux marriage took place instead in Bourgoin in 1768. Rousseau himself writes in a Letter to Madame de Luxembourg (1761): "... je lui ai déclaré que je ne l'épouserais jamais; et même un mariage public nous eût été impossible à cause de la différence de religion ..."{{sfn|Rousseau|1856|p=308}} Eyewitnesses have declared that he didn't even use his own name, but "Renou", which was his alias when he was on the run. He neither conformed to the official formalities of a legal marriage. There were two "witnesses" present: Mr. de Champagneux, mayor of Bourgoin, and a Mr. de Rozière; both were artillery officers.{{sfn|Musset-Pathay|1821|p=488}}<!-- Read more at: http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ro-Sc/Rousseau-Jean-Jacques.html#Comments_form#ixzz3qcpQYMYt -->}} under his alias "Renou" in a faux civil ceremony in Bourgoin on 30 August 1768.{{sfn|Damrosch|2005|pp=451–456}}

In January 1769, Rousseau and Thérèse went to live in a farmhouse near [[Grenoble]]. Here he practiced botany and completed the ''[[Confessions (Rousseau)|Confessions]]''. At this time he expressed regret for placing his children in an orphanage. On 10 April 1770, Rousseau and Thérèse left for Lyon where he befriended Horace Coignet, a fabric designer and amateur musician. At Rousseau's suggestion, Coignet composed musical interludes for Rousseau's prose poem ''Pygmalion''; this was performed in Lyon together with Rousseau's romance ''The Village Soothsayer'' to public acclaim. On 8 June, Rousseau and Thérèse left Lyon for Paris; they reached Paris on 24 June.{{sfn|Damrosch|2005|pp=462–464}}

In Paris, Rousseau and Thérèse lodged in an unfashionable neighborhood of the city, the Rue Platrière—now called the Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He now supported himself financially by copying music, and continued his study of botany.{{sfn|Damrosch|2005|p=465}} At this time also, he wrote his ''[[Letters on the Elements of Botany]]''. These consisted of a series of letters Rousseau wrote to Mme Delessert in Lyon to help her daughters learn the subject. These letters received widespread acclaim when they were eventually published posthumously. "It's a true pedagogical model, and it complements ''Emile''," commented Goethe.{{sfn|Damrosch|2005|p=472}}

In order to defend his reputation against hostile gossip, Rousseau had begun writing the ''Confessions'' in 1765. In November 1770, these were completed, and although he did not wish to publish them at this time, he began to offer group readings of certain portions of the book. Between December 1770, and May 1771, Rousseau made at least four group readings of his book with the final reading lasting seventeen hours.{{sfn|Damrosch|2005|p=474}} A witness to one of these sessions, [[Claude Joseph Dorat]], wrote: {{Blockquote|I expected a session of seven or eight hours; it lasted fourteen or fifteen. ... The writing is truly a phenomenon of genius, of simplicity, candor, and courage. How many giants reduced to dwarves! How many obscure but virtuous men restored to their rights and avenged against the wicked by the sole testimony of an honest man!{{sfn|Damrosch|2005|p=474}} }}

After May 1771, there were no more group readings because Madame d'Épinay wrote to the chief of police, who was her friend, to put a stop to Rousseau's readings so as to safeguard her privacy. The police called on Rousseau, who agreed to stop the readings. His ''Confessions'' were finally published posthumously in 1782.{{sfn|Damrosch|2005|p=476}}

In 1772, Rousseau was invited to present recommendations for a new constitution for the [[Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth]], resulting in the ''[[Considerations on the Government of Poland]]'', which was to be his last major political work.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Gourevitch |editor-first=Victor |title=Rousseau: 'The Social Contract' and Other Later Political Writings |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kcvseZCgQKMC |year=1997 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |page=ix |isbn=978-0-521-42446-2 |access-date=8 February 2017 |archive-date=16 February 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170216213853/https://books.google.com/books?id=kcvseZCgQKMC |url-status=live}}</ref>

Also in 1772, Rousseau began writing ''[[Dialogues: Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques|Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques]]'', which was another attempt to reply to his critics. He completed writing it in 1776. The book is in the form of three dialogues between two characters; a "Frenchman" and "Rousseau", who argue about the merits and demerits of a third character—an author called ''Jean-Jacques''. It has been described as his most unreadable work; in the foreword to the book, Rousseau admits that it may be repetitious and disorderly, but he begs the reader's indulgence on the grounds that he needs to defend his reputation from slander before he dies.{{sfn|Damrosch|2005|pp=476–480}}