ROUSSEAU. 155 



held, and in lieu of it the most absurd charges were 

 brought against him. The senate, the council, all the 

 French inhabitants, and all the diplomatists took his 

 part, and he returned to Paris, where he never could get 

 even an answer to his just complaints, being told that a 

 foreigner, like him, could not be regarded when charg- 

 ing a French functionary with injustice ; for the 

 government very consistently forgot that if foreigners 

 are to be employed in the public service, their not 

 being natives affords no defence whatever to those who 

 maltreat them, and obstruct them in the performance of 

 their official duties. 



On his return to Paris he went to live at an inferior 

 hotel, or rather lodging-house, near the Luxembourg, 

 and there dining at the table with the family, he be- 

 came acquainted with a female servant, a girl from 

 Orleans, where her father had held a place in the 

 mint and her mother had been a shopkeeper, but both 

 were reduced to distress. Their name was Le Vasseur, 

 and the girl's Theresa. She was about twenty- three, 

 of modest demeanour, and so much without education 

 that even after living with him for many years she 

 never could read the figures on the dial-plate of a 

 clock, or tell in what order the months succeeded each 

 other.* He became attached to her ; she cohabited 

 with him, and bore him five children, all of which he 

 sent one after the other to the Foundling Hospital, 

 regardless of the poor mother's tears; and after 

 twenty-five years of this intercourse he married her. 

 The mother, a vulgar and affected woman, lived with 

 them ; and the father, whom she could not endure, but 



* Conf., part ii. liv. 7. 



