 These men truly liked Rousseau and enjoyed his ability to converse on any subject, but they also used him as a way of getting back at Louis XV and the political faction surrounding his mistress, Madame de Pompadour.Even with them, however, Rousseau went too far, courting rejection when he criticized the practice of tax farming, in which some of them engaged.Rousseau's 800-page novel of sentiment, "Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse", was published in 1761 to immense success.