he was on good terms with one or two of the great people in his neighbourhood, and kept up a gracious and social correspondence with them.  He was greatly pleased by a compliment that was paid to him by the government, apparently through the interest of General Conway.  The duty that had been paid upon certain boxes forwarded to Rousseau from Switzerland was recouped by the treasury,[376] and the arrangements for the annual pension of one hundred pounds were concluded and accepted by him, after he had duly satisfied himself that Hume was not the indirect author of the benefaction.[377] The weather was the worst possible, but whenever it allowed him to go out of doors, he found delight in climbing the heights around him in search of curious mosses; for he had now come to think the discovery of a single new plant a hundred times more useful than to have the whole human race listening to your sermons for half a century.[378] “This indolent and contemplative life that you do not approve,” he wrote to the elder Mirabeau, “and for which I pretend to make no excuses, becomes every day more delicious to me:  to wander alone among the trees and rocks that surround my dwelling; to muse or rather to extravagate at my ease, and as you say to stand gaping in the air; when my brain gets too hot, to calm it by dissecting some moss or fern; in short, to surrender myself without restraint to my phantasies, which, heaven be thanked, are all under my own control,—­all that is for me the height of enjoyment, to which I can imagine nothing superior in this world for a man of my age and in my condition."[379]

This contentment did not last long.  The snow kept him indoors.  The excitement of composition abated.  Theresa harassed him by ignoble quarrels with the women in the kitchen.  His delusions returned with greater force than before.  He believed that the whole English nation was in a plot against him, that all his letters were opened before reaching London and before leaving it, that all his movements were closely watched, and that he was surrounded by unseen guards to prevent any attempt at escape.[380] At length these delusions got such complete mastery over him, that in a paroxysm of terror he fled away from Wootton, leaving money, papers, and all else behind him.  Nothing was heard of him for a fortnight, when Mr. Davenport received a letter from him dated at Spalding in Lincolnshire.  Mr. Davenport’s conduct throughout was marked by a humanity and patience that do him the highest honour.  He confesses himself “quite moved to read poor Rousseau’s mournful epistle.”  “You shall see his letter,” he writes to Hume, “the first opportunity; but God help him, I can’t for pity give a copy; and ’tis so much mixed with his own poor little private concerns, that it would not be right in me to do it."[381] This is the generosity which makes Hume’s impatience and that of his mischievous advisers in Paris appear petty.  Rousseau had behaved quite as ill to Mr. Davenport as he had done to Hume,