ROUSSEAU. 175 



detested by her violent and slanderous tongue, was the 

 principal author of the trick, but that Rousseau him- 

 self must have been her accomplice, in the hope of 

 giving an excuse, and a colour of persecution, to his 

 departure from Neufchatel. The whole was reduced on 

 examination to " a single pane of glass broken by a 

 stone thrown from the outside in the night." The 

 Count gives other anecdotes showing how completely 

 Rousseau was the dupe of his own fancies. One is, 

 that when they passed a night together in the moun- 

 tains, lying on some new-mown hay, and asked one 

 another how they had slept, Jean Jacques said " he 

 never slept;" and Col. de Pury, one of the party, 

 stopped him by saying he had envied him the whole 

 night, as he lay awake, owing to the fermenting of the 

 hay beneath him, while the sleepless philosopher 

 snored without any intermission. Of Theresa the 

 Count speaks with constant scorn and dislike, as 

 of a most silly, vulgar, and mischievous person, having 

 only the one accomplishment of being a very good cook. 

 But Rousseau never suffered her to sit at table, though 

 he was continually taking the most ignorant and stupid 

 things she said for proofs of her natural sense. 



It seems here the place to observe that Rousseau 

 distinctly admits his never having felt for a moment the 

 least love for this poor creature (Confessions, Part ii., liv. 

 ix. : QEuv., i., 378) " la moindre etincelle d'amour." 

 Whatever she may have felt for him, he tells us 

 had become nearly extinguished long before 1768, when 

 he married her ; indeed his treatment of her, as well 

 by forming other attachments as by tearing her five 

 infants from her on their birth, and while she was 



