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At the onset of Book V of Emile begins Sophie’s novel but the narrative loses itself to the point that Rousseau is forced to interrupt it and double up the heroine who was his model. Such meandering is not insignificant: the fiction of the first Sophie provides paradoxical proof of the truth of the author’s “novelistic maxims” Thanks to a comparative study between the initial version of this episode in the Favre MS and the definitive version, this article shows how Rousseau explored the stupendous power of the formation of the subject by novelistic fiction. In displaying the novelist’s choice rather than cancelling out the lost tale, Rousseau exposes the truth of his own principles, while warning readers that they might be misled by it.