Jean Jacques had been expecting Granet's music, and, on receiving the opera in a complete form, took it to La Vaubalière, the farmer-general, and offered it to him, directly or indirectly, as a suitable piece for Madame de Pompadour's theatre at Versailles, where several operettas had already been produced. La Vaubalière was anxious to maintain himself in the good graces of the favourite, and purchased for her entertainment the right of representing the _Devin du Village_. This handsome present cost the gallant financier the sum of six thousand francs. However, the opera was performed, was wonderfully successful, and was afterwards produced at the Académie, when Rousseau received four thousand francs more; so at least says M. Castil Blaze, who appears to have derived his information from the books of the theatre, though according to Rousseau's own statement in the _Confessions_, the Opera sent him only fifty _louis_, which he declares he never asked for, but which he does not pretend to have returned. Rousseau "confesses," with studied detail, how the music of each piece in the _Devin du Village_ occurred to him; how he at one time thought of burning the whole affair (a conceit, by the way, which has since been rendered common-place by amateur authors in their prefaces); how his friends succeeded in persuading him to do nothing of the kind; and how, at last, he wrote the drama and sketched out the whole of the music in six days, so that when he arrived with his work in Paris, he had nothing to add but the recitative and the "_remplissage_" by which he probably meant the orchestral parts. In the next page he tells us that he would have given anything in the world if he could only have had the _Devin du Village_ performed for himself alone, and have listened to it with closed doors, as Lulli is reported to have listened to his _Armide_, executed for his sole gratification. This pleasure might, perhaps, have been enjoyed by Rousseau if he had really composed the music himself, for when the Académie produced his second _Devin du Village_, of which the music was undoubtedly his own, the public positively refused to listen to it, and hissed it until it was withdrawn. If the director had persisted in representing the piece the theatre would doubtless have been deserted by every one but the composer. [Sidenote: LE DEVIN DU VILLAGE.]