612 Rousseau : [ Dec. 
whom he assisted over a running stream, and at whose house—“ si rité 
audita recordamur’—he spent one or two delightful days. This incident, 
though trifling and scarcely worth mention in itself, is important as it 
regards Rousseau. His ever-creative mind, fascinated by the courtesy 
of these fair Unknowns, at once robed them in drapery selected from the 
wardrobe of a well-filled fancy ; and, as the reality of their appearance 
wore off, it laid the foundation of that beautiful idealism, which Madame 
de Warrens strengthened, Madame de Houdetot confirmed, and which 
afterwards shone forth, to the admiration and regret of thousands, in the 
unequalled character of Eloise. 
It was some time after this rencontre, that, fatigued with walking, 
hungry, penniless, and dispirited—the past wretched, the future a blank 
—the young Rousseau knocked for charity at the gate of a good-natured 
widow lady, named De Warrens, who at once, with all the generous 
inconsiderateness of a woman, listened to his petition, gave him good 
advice, supplied him with food and money, and sent him home. To this 
acquaintance—thus strangely commenced—must be traced much, indeed 
the greater part, of those singular obliquities in judgment and feeling 
which deformed the otherwise acute mind of Rousseau. Circumstances, 
or as he himself would call it, destiny, threw him, some years after- 
wards, when a youth of one or two and twenty, for the second time into 
the hands of this lady. But, alas! at this period his acquaintance was not 
without dishonour. By degrees he secured for himself an interest in 
her heart, which, however, in the headlong infatuation of the moment, 
he was content to share with another. From this hour, his mind received 
a warp ; from this hour, he learned to become sophistical, in order to justify 
his own excesses, and opinions insincere at first, acquired by long habit, 
and by being perpetually brooded over, an air of decided truth 
The daily romance of his life—for Rousseau now lived wholly with 
Madame de Warrens, unoccupied, except in rambling about his sublime 
neighbourhood, where he familiarized himself with the loftiest forms of 
natural beauty, and fed and strengthened a strong but diseased mind— 
confirmed these opinions ; until, at length, all that was sound and ster- 
ling in thought gave place to art and sophistry. This meditative and 
impassioned mode of life, which, while it strengthens the sensibility, 
wholly unfits it for society, was pursued by Rousseau for many years. 
Occasionally, indeed, he visited Paris, where his exquisite relish for 
music, and the circumstance of his having composed a successful opera; 
procured him admittance into the highest circles; but his mind could 
not adapt itself to the etiquette of a court, his pride, too, forbade all 
approach to friendship, and. he lived a hermit even within the atmos- 
phere of Versailles. Before this, we should observe, he had, from some 
cause or other, separated himself from Madame de Warrens, and now 
lodged in the house of a Swiss family, with one member of which, a 
girl named Theresa, about nineteen years of age, he carried on a dis- 
honourable intercourse. As if this in itself were not sufficiently degrad- 
ing, he rendered it still more so, by sending the poor offsprings of his 
guilt to the Foundling Hospital at Paris; upon some plausible plea, 
which he had the insufferable audacity to defend in conversation, and 
also at considerable length in his “Confessions.” Meanwhile, to satisfy 
his notions of independence, and secure what'he called “ freedom of 
thought and action,” he employed himself in copying music, by which 
drudgery he contrived to earn a decent subsistence up to the moment 
