This article examines the status of truth in the fictional world of Rousseau's novelLa Nouvelle Héloïse, in which the characters reveal and conceal the truth, deliberately or unwittingly, in order to manipulate one another and satisfy the exigencies of the individual and of the group. The framework of this study is provided by the series of acts that expose, obscure, or repress the truth. The novelist's experimental case‐study of communication among apparently ideal people under often unsatisfactory circumstances is the object of this analysis. The events of the novel suggest that language is a rather imperfect instrument for conveying or discovering the truth. Nonetheless, Rousseau and his characters are forced to act as if truth were indeed communicable. As they discover, one way, in fact the best way, of uncovering the truth is, paradoxically, through fict