In closing this letter, I am surprised at my having been able to write it. If it were possible to die with grief, every line was sufficient to kill me with sorrow. Every circumstance of the affair is equally incomprehensible. Such conduct as yours hath been, is not in nature: it is contradictory to itself, and yet it is demonstrable to me that it has been such as I conceive. On each side of me there is a bottomless abyss! and I am lost in one or the other. If you are guilty, I am the most unfortunate of mankind; if you are innocent, I am the most culpable.[40] You even make me desire to be that contemptible object. Yes, the situation to which you see me reduced, prostrate at your feet, crying out for mercy, and doing every thing to obtain it; publishing aloud my own unworthiness, and paying the most explicit homage to your virtues, would be a state of joy and cordial effusion, after the grievous state of restraint and mortification into which you have plunged me. I have but a word more to say. If you are guilty, write to me no more; it would be superfluous, for certainly you could not deceive me. If you are innocent, justify yourself. I know my duty; I love, and shall always love it, however difficult and severe. There is no state of abjection that a heart, not formed for it, may not recover from. Once again, I say, if you are innocent, deign to justify yourself; if you are not, adieu for ever. J. J. R. [5] The fact was this. My friend, Mr Ramsay, a painter of eminence, and a man of merit, proposed to draw Mr Rousseau's picture; and when he had begun it, told me he intended to make me a present of it. Thus the design of having Mr Rousseau's picture drawn did not come from me, nor did it cost me any thing. Mr Rousseau, therefore, is equally contemptible in paying me a compliment for this pretended gallantry, in his letter of the 29th March, and in converting it into ridicule here.--Mr HUME. [6] Mr Rousseau forms a wrong judgment of me, and ought to know me better. I have written to Mr Davenport, even since our rupture, to engage him to continue his kindness to his unhappy guest.--Mr HUME. [7] How strange are the effects of a disordered imagination! Mr Rousseau tells us he is ignorant of what passes in the world, and yet talks of the enemies he has in England. How does he know this? Where did he see them? He hath received nothing but marks of beneficence and hospitality. Mr Walpole is the only person who hath thrown out a little piece of raillery against him; but is not therefore his enemy. If Mr Rousseau could have seen things exactly as they are, he would have seen that he had no other friend in England but me, and no other enemy but himself.--Mr HUME.