Just outside Geneva, at Les Delices, Voltaire had built his private theater, where he used to invite the favored children of Calvin to witness the drama. Voltaire being a playwright and without prejudice in the matter, had even suggested a municipal theater for Geneva. This brought forth from Jean Jacques a scorching pamphlet on the seductive deviltry of the drama, wherein it was pointed out that the downfall of every nation that had gone by the boards had begun its slide to Avernus in its love of the play. In this essay Rousseau expressed the view of orthodox Geneva, where the traditions of Calvin still survived. "The theater stands for luxury, idleness, sensuality and all that is feverish and base; private theaters are private bagnios," wrote Rousseau. Probably Rousseau, when he began to write, did not care anything about the matter one way or the other. But Voltaire had neglected to invite him to a "first night," and now he was getting even. As he wrote he convinced himself. "He is like an oven that is too hot," said Voltaire; "it burns everything that is put into it." Then when Voltaire found that Rousseau's pamphlet was really making a splash in the sea of books, he got mad and called Rousseau a "dog of Diogenes," "that Punchinello of letters," the "fanfaron of ink," and other choice epithets. Every knock being a boost, then as now, Rousseau found himself lifted into the domain of successful authorship. His income was less than a hundred pounds a year (Voltaire's was two or three thousand pounds). but he had all he needed, and things were coming his way. Voltaire represented the nobility--Rousseau stood for the people. And Geneva being but a big village--twenty-four thousand inhabitants--the battle of the giants was watched by the neighbors with interest. Rousseau was a member of the Protestant Church; Voltaire called himself a Catholic--so little do labels count. Voltaire lived in a palace and rode in a coach with outriders; Rousseau trudged on foot alone. Solitary, he would take his piece of dry bread and grape-leaf full of cherries, and wander to the woods or on the mountain-side, stopping and sitting on a boulder to write on his ever-faithful pad when the thought came. "I have to walk ten miles to get a thousand words," he said. In Geneva at this time lived Diderot and D'Alembert, literary refugees, busy at that first encyclopedia. They ran a kind of literary clearing-house, and gave piecework to everybody who could write and had two ideas to jingle against each other. Both Rousseau and Voltaire, whenever they were in the mood, wrote for the encyclopedia. Finally Voltaire started a dictionary of his own.