The project, however, grew cool. The dedication of his Discourse on Inequality to the Republic was received with indifference by some and indignation by others.[246] Nobody thought it a compliment, and some thought it an impertinence. This was one reason which turned his purpose aside. Another was the fact that the illustrious Voltaire now also signed himself Swiss, and boasted that if he shook his wig the powder flew over the whole of the tiny Republic. Rousseau felt certain that Voltaire would make a revolution in Geneva, and that he should find in his native country the tone, the air, the manners which were driving him from Paris. From that moment he counted Geneva lost. Perhaps he ought to make head against the disturber, but what could he do alone, timid and bad talker as he was, against a man arrogant, rich, supported by the credit of the great, of brilliant eloquence, and already the very idol of women and young men?[247] Perhaps it would not be uncharitable to suspect that this was a reason after the event, for no man was ever so fond as Rousseau, or so clever a master in the art, of covering an accident in a fine envelope of principle, and, as we shall see, he was at this time writing to Voltaire in strains of effusive panegyric. In this case he almost tells us that the one real reason why he did not return to Geneva was that he found a shelter from Paris close at hand. Even before then he had begun to conceive characteristic doubts whether his fellow-citizens at Geneva would not be nearly as hostile to his love of living solitarily and after his own fashion as the good people of Paris. Rousseau has told us a pretty story, how one day he and Madame d'Epinay wandering about the park came upon a dilapidated lodge surrounded by fruit gardens, in the skirts of the forest of Montmorency; how he exclaimed in delight at its solitary charm that here was the very place of refuge made for him; and how on a second visit he found that his good friend had in the interval had the old lodge pulled down, and replaced by a pretty cottage exactly arranged for his own household. "My poor bear," she said, "here is your place of refuge; it was you who chose it, 'tis friendship offers it; I hope it will drive away your cruel notion of going from me."[248] Though moved to tears by such kindness, Rousseau did not decide on the spot, but continued to waver for some time longer between this retreat and return to Geneva.