However, one day Voltaire invited the city authorities to "Les Délices," and there treated them to a representation of his "Zaïre," and it was no little triumph to the wily old schemer that his audience were overcome with emotion. "We have moved to tears almost the whole council--Consistory and magistrates; I have never seen more tears," he delightedly reports; "never have the Calvinists been more tender! God be blessed! I have corrupted Geneva and the Republic." Nevertheless he was not to triumph. The theatre at "Les Délices" had to be closed. He opened his theatre several times elsewhere in Genevan territory, and began to draw crowds, but in every instance was compelled to close again. In truth, it was not till 1766 that Geneva had a theatre of its own, and even then it lasted but two years. The building was set on fire by some Puritans, and, being only of wood, was rapidly consumed. Crowds ran to the conflagration, but finding that it was only the theatre that was on fire, they emptied their buckets, shouting, "Let those who wanted a theatre put out the fire!" "_Perruques_ or _tignasses_," exclaimed Voltaire, with irritation, "it is all the same with Geneva. If you think you have caught her, she escapes." Rousseau (1712-1778) was the son of a Genevan watchmaker, and received but a very desultory education in his early days. Whilst yet but a boy he had drunk in the republican and Calvinistic spirit of his native town, hence his democratic leanings. He was a lover of nature, and fond of solitude, and was possessed of a deep religious feeling, even though his religion was based on sentiment. He witnessed the revolt of 1735-37, and, _enfant du peuple_ as he was, rebelled against the tyranny of the patricians, and gave vent to his indignation in his writings. He thus became the mouthpiece of a down-trodden people craving for liberty, of a society satiated with culture. His prize essay on "Arts and Sciences" is an answer in the negative to the question propounded by the Dijon Academy, Whether the New Learning had resulted in an improvement to morals. His next essay on "L'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité" is a sally against the state of society. In it he advocates a return to the condition of nature, on which Voltaire sarcastically retorted, "I felt a great desire to go on all fours." "Emile" (1762), which Goethe calls the "gospel of education," declares against the hollowness of our distorted and over-refined civilization, and advocates a more rational training based on nature. And Pestalozzi, pedagogue and philanthropist, though he styled "Emile" a "book of dreams," was yet nourished on Rousseau's ideas. "Emile" is opposed to deism and materialism on the one hand, whilst on the other it objects to revelation and miracles, and declares that existing religion is one-sided and unable to save mankind from intellectual slavery. The excitement the book created was immense on both sides, and it was publicly burnt both at Paris and Geneva. Its