24 ROUSSEAU by his mother's relations and was in the first place com- mitted by them to the tutorship of a M. Lambercier, pastor at Bossey. Of these times as of the greater part of his life there are ample details in the Confessions, but it may be as well to remark at once that this famous book, however charming as literature, is to be used as docu- mentary evidence only with great reserve. In 1724 he was removed from this school and taken into the house of his uncle Bernard, by whom he was shortly afterwards apprenticed to a notary. His master, however, found or thought him quite incapable and sent him back. After a short time (April 25, 1725) he was apprenticed afresh, this time to an engraver. He did not dislike the work, but was or thought himself cruelly treated by his master. At last in 1728, when he was sixteen, he ran away, the truancy being by his own account unintentional in the first instance, and due to the fact of the city gates being shut earlier than usual. Then began a very extraordinary series of wanderings and adventures, for much of which there is no authority but his own. He first fell in with some proselytizers of the Roman faith at Confignon in Savoy, and by them he was sent to Madame de Warens at Annecy, a young and pretty widow who was herself a convert. Her influence, however, which was to be so great, was not immediately exercised, and he was, so to speak, passed on to Turin, where there was an institution specially devoted to the reception of neophytes. His experiences here were (according to his own account, it must always be understood) sufficiently unsatisfactory, but he abjured duly and was rewarded by being presented with twenty francs and sent about his business. He wandered about in Turin for some time, and at last estab- lished himself as footman to a Madame de Vercellis. Here occurred the famous incident of the theft of a ribbon, of which he accused a fellow servant a girl too. But, though he kept his place by this piece of cowardice, Madame de Vercellis died not long afterwards and he was turned off. He found, however, another place with the Comte de Gouvon, but lost this also through coxcombry. Then he resolved to return to Madame de Warens at Annecy. The chronology of all these events is somewhat obscure, but they seem to have occupied about three years. Even then Rousseau did not settle at once in the anomalous but to him charming position of domestic lover to this lady, who, nominally a converted Protestant, was in reality, as many women of her time were, a kind of deist, with a theory of noble sentiment and a practice of libertinism tempered by good nature. It used to be held that in her conjugal relations she was even more sinned against than sinning. But recent investigations seem to show that M. de Yuarrens (which is said to be the correct spelling of the name) was a very unfortunate hus- band, and was deserted and robbed by his wife. However, she welcomed Rousseau kindly, thought it necessary to complete his education, and he was sent to the semin- arists of St Lazare to be improved in classics, and also to a music master. In one of his incomprehensible freaks he set off for Lyons, and, after abandoning his companion in an epileptic fit, returned to Annecy to find Madame de Warens gone no one knew whither. Then for some months he relapsed into the life of vagabondage, varied by improbable adventures, which (according to his own statement) he so often pursued. Hardly knowing anything of music, he attempted to give lessons and a concert at Lausanne ; and he actually taught at Neuchatel. Then he became or says he became secretary to a Greek archimandrite who was travelling in Switzerland to collect subscriptions for the rebuilding of the Holy Sepulchre ; then he went to Paris, and, with recommendations from the French ambas- sador at Soleurc, saw something of good society ; then he returned on foot through Lyons to Savoy, hearing that Madame de Warens was at Chambe'ry. This was in 1732, and Rousseau, who for a time had unimportant employ- ments in the service of the Sardinian crown, was shortly installed by Madame de Warens, whom he still called Maman, as amant en litre in her singular household, wherein she diverted herself with him, with music, and with chemistry. In 1736 Madame de Warens, partly for Rousseau's health, took a country house, Les Charmettes, a short distance from Chambe'ry. Here in summer, and in the town during winter, Rousseau led a delightful life, which he has delightfully described. In a desultory way he did a good deal of reading, but in 1738 his health again became bad, and he was recommended to go to Montpellier. By his own account this journey to Montpel- lier was in reality a voyage d, Cythere in company with a certain Madame de Larnage. This being so, he could hardly complain when on returning he found that his official position in Madame de Warens's household had been taken by a person named Vintzenried. He was, however, less likely than most men to endure the position of second in command, and in 1740 he became tutor at Lyons to the children of M. de Mably, not the well-known writer of that name, but his and Condillac's elder brother. But Rousseau did not like teaching and was a bad teacher, and after a visit to Les Charmettes, finding that his place there was finally occupied, he once more went to Paris in 1741. He was not without recommendations. But a new system of musical notation which he thought he had discovered was unfavourably received by the Academie des Sciences, where it was read in August 1742, and he was unable to obtain pupils. Madame Dupin, however, to whose house he had obtained the entry, procured him the honourable if not very lucrative post of secretary to M. de Montaigu, ambassador at Venice. With him he stayed for about eighteen months, and has as usual infinite complaints to make of his employer and some strange stories to tell. At length he threw up his situation and returned to Paris (1745). Up to this time that is to say, till his thirty-third year Rousseau's life, though continuously described by himself, was of the kind called subterranean, and the account of it must be taken with considerable allowances. There are, to say the least, grave improbabilities in it ; there are some chronological difficulties ; and in one or two instances his accounts have been flatly denied by persons more or less entitled to be heard. He had written nothing, and if he was known at all it was as an eccentric vagabond. From this time, however, he is more or less in view; and, though at least two events of his life his quarrel with Diderot and his death are and are likely long to be subjects of dispute, its general history can be checked and followed with reasonable confidence. On his return to Paris he renewed his relations with the Dupin family and with the literary group of Diderot, to which he had already been introduced by M. de Mably's letters. He had an opera, Les Muses Galantes, privately represented ; he copied music for money, and received from Madame Dupin and her son- in-law M. de Francueil a small but regular salary as secretary. Ho lived at the Hotel St Quentin for a time, and once more arranged for himself an equivocal domestic establishment. His mistress, whom towards the close of his life he married after a fashion, was Thdrese le Vasseur, a servant at the inn. She had little beauty, no education or understanding, and few charms of any kind that his friends could discover, besides which she had a detestable mother, who was the bane of Rousseau's life. But he made himself at any rate for a time quite happy with her, and (according to Rousseau's account, the accuracy of
