Part 16

At first, his head was perpetually full of projects for advancement. He made many little journeys to Lyons, Geneva, and Niort, for the sake of prosecuting schemes, which he believed to be fraught with advantages; but which failing each in turn, he returned penniless to his home with madame de Warens. By degrees, however, he fell into a bad state of health. Feeling an inexplicable weakness pervade his frame, he believed he had but a short time to live, and lost his desire for advancement in the languor and bodily inaction produced by disease. His protectress, for the sake of securing a friend at the court of Savoy, rented a house of a Piedmontese noble at Chambery, which no one else would take, being close and damp. In the summer, she escaped from this species of prison to a small country house. Les Charmettes, near Chambery. There, in solitude and tranquillity, Rousseau gave himself up to study. Mathematics and Latin were his principal occupations: he worked hard: there was an inaptitude to remember in him which made knowledge difficult to acquire; but he acquired the power of reflection--he learnt to distinguish his ideas--he recognised moral principles and philosophical truths--he penetrated deeply into the secret springs of human action. Man's nature was often exposed as a map before him--and he knew its various bearings and powers--although he was ill able then, as ever, to control its impulses as they existed within himself.

The confidential domestic of madame de Warens died; and Rousseau, in some sort fulfilling his avocations, discovered the ruin into which his protectress was plunged, through her love of scheming, and the ready ear she gave to every quack and swindler who sought her for the sake of plunder. It became his desire to save her; and, if that were impossible, to make such a fortune as would enable him to be of use to her in his turn.

It is not our intention to enter into the details of Rousseau's connection with this lady. To any one who loves to make a study of human nature, the "Confessions" are an invaluable book, and disclose the secret of many hearts to those who have courage to penetrate into the recesses of their own. But, to be useful, they must be read as they are, with the author's observations and minute anatomy of motive; and a mere abridgment would disgust without advantage. It is not to-day that we have learnt, that it is not true, that when a woman loses one virtue she loses all. The true distinctive virtue of woman's nature is her promptitude to self-sacrifice, and a capacity to bind up her existence in the happiness and well-being of the objects of her attachment. Experience shows us, that as far as a woman does this, and is neither worldly nor depraved, she preserves, in spite of error, the more lovely qualities of her nature. Personal fidelity is the purifier and preserver of the affections; and whoso fails in this, either man or woman, degrades human nature--the glory of which is to ally the sensations of love to the emotions of the heart and the passions of the soul. If we examine the conduct of madame de Warens by this rule, we find her wanting; and whether she be a real personage, and did and felt as Rousseau describes, or an imaginary being, we may pass judgment on her, and assert that the event proves that depravity of conduct led her to fail in fulfilling the duties which the affections impose.

Rousseau, having somewhat recovered his health, returned to his projects for worldly advancement, and his journeys that carried him hither and thither in search of it. On one occasion he visited Montpellier for the sake of consulting a physician; he returned--his hopes of renovated health gone, his resolve to dedicate himself to his benefactress strengthened. He returned, to find another in his place--his friend's heart changed--the paradise he cherished desecrated. He did not the less resolve to serve her. "Reduced," he writes, "to form a fate for myself independent of her, and not being able even to imagine such, I sought it wholly in herself--and I did this so entirely, that I succeeded in almost forgetting myself. The ardent desire of seeing her happy absorbed all my affections. In vain did she separate her happiness from mine; I saw it in hers, in spite of her. Thus the virtues whose seed were in my soul, and which study had matured, began to germinate with my misfortunes, and waited but for the operation of adversity to bud forth." This exalted state of mind, however, could not last. Finding his rival totally unworthy of his attempts to educate him, and that he was plunging the unfortunate madame de Warens deeper in inevitable ruin, he hurried from the scene. The employment of tutor to the children of M. de Mabli, at Lyons, was offered him; he undertook it; but soon became disgusted. At a distance, the tranquil happiness of Les Charmettes recurred to his memory; he began to fancy that he was in fault--that he had but to return to find love and peace. He did return, and the illusion was dispelled for ever. For a short time he gave himself up to study, while he revolved a thousand projects for his future life. Music was still a favourite pursuit. He had invented a method of noting music which he considered more facile and perfect than the one in use. He believed that, if known, it would be generally adopted; and that, if he took it to Paris and showed it to the professors, they would at once perceive its advantages, and his fortune would be made. His imagination speedily warmed with the idea, and he hurried to execute it. "I had brought," he writes, "some money with me from Lyons; I sold my books to acquire a sum sufficient for my journey. My design was taken and executed within the space of fifteen days. In short, full of magnificent ideas--and ever the same in all times--I left Savoy with my system of music, as before I had quitted Turin with my toy fountain."

Rousseau pauses--his biographers usually pause--at this epoch, when he was about to enter on a new life,--leaving the country and solitude for the busy capital of France. He was nine and twenty; his character was formed. The love of adventure, which had first caused his flight from Geneva, had turned into a love of scheming. While censuring madame de Warens for this turn of mind; he little felt how entirely--he participated in it. His life was made up of schemes; which his ardent disposition exalted into passions. The genuine impulses of his soul were; his genius, developed in authorship; his passionate heart; which wasted its fondest impulses on one (madame d'Houdetot) who loved another. These were not schemes; but his stoicism--his hermitism (if this word he allowed)--his independence carried to an extravagant pitch; were all schemes; and succeeded; consequently; as ill as possible. "With this scheming head; a heart yet full of romance; and a mind stored beyond his own knowledge with observation and sagacity; he left every old friend; every old association; and plunged; poor and unknown; into a new life, in the most civilised and most profligate city in the world.

[Sidenote: 1741. Ætat. 29.]

Rousseau entered Paris this time, as it appeared to him, under good auspices. He found a friendly and cordial welcome from several French ladies, to whom he had letters of introduction. His system of noting music was examined, eulogised, and neglected by the Academy; and Rameau detecting a radical defect, its inventor cast it aside; but he found employment as secretary to madame Dupin and M. Franceuil; and better prospects opened themselves when he was appointed secretary to M. de Montaigu, ambassador to Venice. [Sidenote: 1743. Ætat. 31.] Here the influence of an evil destiny was manifest. Had the ambassador been a man of honour and sense, Rousseau might have passed a happy life, fulfilling an honourable career; but M. de Montaigu was avaricious to a degree that made him sacrifice propriety as well as dignity to his saving propensities. "The character of this ambassador," says Bernardin de Saint Pierre, "is well known. I have heard from good authority several traits of his avarice. 'Three shoes,' he often said, 'are equivalent to two pair, because one is sooner worn out than the other;' and he therefore always had three shoes made at a time." This man, silly, insolent, and grasping, crushed the last ambition of Rousseau. He treated him with such indignity that he was forced to leave him. Plundered and ill treated, while every one at Venice at the time was eager to furnish testimonials of his excellent conduct--and his dispatches had merited high praise--he received no compensation from the court he served. The iniquitous maxim of the French government, never publicly to acknowledge the misconduct of those whom it employed, joined to the circumstance that Rousseau was not a Frenchman, sufficed to render his representations of no avail. This thoroughly, and with reason, disgusted him from seeking employment under a system where all worth was trampled on by rank and wealth.

He returned to Paris, and was kindly received by all his friends, with one exception only, of a highborn lady, who could not imagine that a _roturier_ had any right to quarrel with a noble. His friends madame Dupin and M. Franceuil continued their employment; the latter subsequently endeavoured to place him advantageously as cashier in his office, he being farmer-general; but Rousseau could neither rest nor sleep while the money-chest was under his care; and falling ill in consequence, gave up his situation. M. de Franceuil was somewhat alienated by this act; he began to think that there were no means of befriending a man who shrunk from a lucrative and easy employment.

On his first arrival from Venice, Rousseau enjoyed the intimate friendship of an enlightened Spaniard, a man of noble nature and great powers of mind. They agreed to live under the same roof, and allied themselves in the closest friendship. D'Alcuna was recalled to his native country, and Rousseau felt the void. He had been accustomed to domestic society, and in addition he felt that he needed the kind attentions of a woman, and this want led to the fatal act from which sprung so many of his misfortunes.

In his native country, or in England, Rousseau would, under the influence of public opinion, probably have married. He would not have been content in forming so solemn a tie without being satisfied with the connections of her who hereafter was to share his life; he would have desired still more to assure himself of the qualities of her heart and mind. Unfortunately his residence in Savoy and in Paris had deprived him of all primitive simplicity in his principles of moral conduct; and he had none of that fastidious taste that made him shrink from the society of the vicious. For purposes of economy he dined at a sort of table-d'hôte frequented by persons lost to all sense of decency; refinement was out of the question. He found a poor girl there, who was too modest for the depraved and brutalised men who frequented the house. Rousseau took her part, ties of kindness were formed between them, and it appearing a matter of convenience to himself, he induced her to become his mistress.

Therese le Vasseur was not an ill-conducted girl on certain points; she was always faithful, as far as is known, to her tie to Rousseau; but she was not only ignorant and illiterate, but wanting in common understanding. Rousseau boasts that she could give excellent advice on emergencies; but this common sense did not lead her to resist the influence of her mother, a low cunning woman; while Rousseau, not liking to have the burden of her destiny, future as well as present, thrown wholly on himself, felt no inclination, at the commencement of their intercourse, when alone it was possible, to separate her from association with her family, which tended to keep her vulgar-minded and artful.

Even in his Confessions, where Rousseau discloses his secret errors, he by no means appreciates the real extent of his misconduct on this occasion. He allied himself to a girl whom he despised too much to allow her at first even to share his home; he took her as a sort of convenience, and when inconveniences arose from the connection, he was disposed to get rid of them on the easiest possible terms. Theresa was about to become a mother. According to the profligate code of French morals, this fact would dishonour her; though the illicit intercourse, if not openly acknowledged, did not. Rousseau did not like to multiply ties between himself and his mistress and her family: he was needy: he had heard young men of rank and fortune allude vauntingly to the recourse they had had on such occasions to the Foundling Hospital. He followed their criminal example.

He at first acted, he says, without serious examination of the morality of his conduct; but when he commenced author, he gave attentive consideration to the point, and satisfied himself that he did right, and continued his course of conduct. Five of his children were thus sent to a receptacle where few survive; and those who do go through life are brutified by their situation, or depressed by the burden, ever weighing at the heart, that they have not inherited the commonest right of humanity, a parent's care.

It is insulting the reader to dwell on the flagrancy of this act. But it is a lesson that ought to teach us humility. That a man as full of genius and aspiration after virtue as Rousseau, should have failed in the plainest dictates of nature and conscience, through the force of example and circumstances, shows us how little we can rely on our own judgment. It shows too, that a father is not to be trusted for natural instincts towards his offspring; for the mother wept, and it needed the control of her own mother, and strong necessity, to induce the weak-minded and misguided girl to consent to part with her offspring.

We say little of Rousseau's vain excuses as to the probable destiny of his children. They were better, he says, brought up by the public, than rendered rogues by madame le Vasseur, or led into evil courses as dependants on madame d'Epinay and the maréchale de Luxembourg. This futile reasoning does not need elaborate refutation. Rousseau talks of public care, as if that were, in such a place as a Parisian foundling hospital, aught else but public desertion. The poor children in all probability died in their infancy.

Rousseau was indeed short-sighted. Brought up in virtue and honour, as a man of his talents ought to have brought up his offspring,--or genius were a vainer gift even than it is,--these children might have clustered round him in his days of desolation, have cheered his house with smiles, and been a help and support in his age. He would not have felt friendless, nor been driven to suicide by the sense of abandonment and treachery. He indeed sowed the wind, and reaped the whirlwind. France was on the eve of a sanguinary revolution. The social state of things was about wholly to change. Who knows of what use Rousseau's sons might have been to check barbarous outrages, to teach justice, or display fortitude? Such ideas are vain, but will present themselves. Our first duty is to render those to whom we give birth, wise, virtuous, and happy, as far as in us lies. Rousseau failed in this,--can we wonder that his after course was replete with sorrow? The distortion of intellect that blinded him to the first duties of life, we are inclined to believe to be allied to that vein of insanity, that made him an example among men for self-inflicted sufferings. We now dismiss this subject. It was necessary to bring it so far forward as to show the evil effects of so bad a cause; it is too painful to dwell further upon.

By degrees Rousseau overcame his dislike to its being known to his friends that he had formed this sort of connection with Theresa, and he made common household with her. This species of intercourse was looked upon in a different light in France than in England. She was regarded as Rousseau's housekeeper, and respected as such; and no one thought that they had a right to scrutinise their real relations, or to censure them. This had been praiseworthy as a proceeding founded on tolerant and charitable principles; but when we find that this kindly-seeming society was a Moloch, whom to pacify, little children were ruthlessly sacrificed, the whole system takes a revolting and criminal aspect from which we turn with loathing.

However, to go back to narrative. Rousseau instituted Theresa his housekeeper, assisted in the maintenance of her relatives, and found, in the convenience and attention which these domestic arrangements brought with them, a great alleviation to his physical sufferings. [Sidenote: 1749. Ætat. 37.] This same year was memorable on another and important score. Among his Parisian friends, there was none to whom he was more attached than Diderot, a man of an amiable disposition, and possessed of greater abilities in the eyes of those who personally knew him, than he has developed in his writings. Some people in power were displeased at certain personal allusions in his "Letter on the Blind." According to the nefarious system of the old regime, the result was, a _lettre de cachet_, and his being imprisoned in the keep of the castle of Vincennes. Rousseau was penetrated by indignation and anguish. He fancied that his friend would never be liberated; he figured to himself all that a man of ardent and yet feeble temperament would suffer in solitary confinement. He wrote to implore madame de Pompadour to exert her influence, either to procure his liberation, or to admit of him, Rousseau, being shut up with him. On all occasions he was energetic in representing the unmerited sufferings to which his friend was exposed. After a period, the confinement of Diderot was mitigated. The castle and park of Vincennes, on parole, were given him for a prison, with liberty to see his friends. Rousseau hastened to avail himself of this permission, and frequently walked to Vincennes to pass the afternoons in relieving the solitude of his friend. The way was long, the summer sultry, his pace slow. He read as he walked along; and once took with him the "Mercure de France" to beguile the way; as he looked it over, he fell upon the question proposed by the Academy of Dijon, as the subject for the prize of the following year--"Whether the progress of the arts and sciences had tended to corrupt or purify the manners of men." The words touched a chord that revealed a power, latent in his heart, undreamt of before. The scroll of society unrolled itself before him, such as he found it, blotted and tainted, in the city of the earth that boasted to be the most advanced in the cultivation of the arts and sciences. And beside it he placed a picture of pristine innocence,--of man enjoying the full development of his physical powers; living for the day as it rose, untouched by care, unbewildered by intellectual speculations,--by vanity, emulation, or pride;--man liberated from the control of opinion and the tyranny of his own unreasonable desires. Words descriptive of such a state poured into his mind; expressions of burning eloquence seemed to cluster on his lips, and to demand a voice. Before he could transfer his thoughts to paper, much was lost; but enough remained to gain for him the reputation of being one of the most eloquent authors that ever lived.[8]

The eloquence with which he represented the evils of civilisation, and the blessings of a state of nature, as he called it, fascinated every reader. The freshness and energy of his style charmed; the heart he put into his arguments served instead of reason, and convinced. The opponents of his system were sufficiently in the wrong, to make him appear absolutely in the right. Yet, in point of fact, nothing can be more unnatural than his natural man. The most characteristic part of man's nature is his affections. The protection he affords to woman--the cares required by children; yet Rousseau describes his natural man as satisfying his desires by chance,--leaving the woman on the instant; while she, on her side, goes through child-bearing, child-birth, and child-nurture alone. Much may be granted to the strength that human beings enjoy in savage life; much to the little needed by the inhabitants of those happy isles where food grows beneath their feet; but, in all, man has ever been found (except in one or two cases, where the human animal descends below brutes), the protector of women, and the source of his children's subsistence; and among all societies, however barbarously constituted, the gentler and nobler individuals among them have loved their wives and their offspring with constant and self-sacrificing passion. Let us advance civilisation to its highest pitch, or retrograde to its origin,--and let both bring freedom from political and social slavery; but in all let us hold fast by the affections: the cultivation of these ought to be the scope of every teacher of morality, every well-wisher to the improvement of the human race. Poor Rousseau, who had thrust his offspring from parental care to the niggard benevolence of a public charity, found some balm to the remorse that now and then stung him, by rejecting the affections out of his scheme of the state of natural man.

His work had a sudden and prodigious success; and as the ideas that inspired it disclosed a new and intellectual world to him, so did the favour of the public open a new scene of life. It was soon after writing this essay, that M. de Franceuil offered him the place of cashier. The uneasiness he felt, and other circumstances, combined to give him a fit of illness. During the delirium of fever, and during the reveries of convalescence, he formed a plan for securing his independence. He believed that he had but a few years to live; and he saw no prudence in working for a fortune he could never enjoy. He resolved therefore to renounce his place of cashier, to give up that of secretary to madame Dupin, and to gain his subsistence by copying music. In Paris, men of letters, frequenting the highest society, often live in the most frugal manner, and need only the wherewithal to buy their daily bread. Rousseau determined to reduce himself to this situation, to limit his expenses to bare necessities, and to guard the independence he coveted, by decreasing his wants. His friends heard of his resolution with incredulity, surprise, and subsequent disapprobation. The family of Therese le Vasseur were dependent on him, and he thus condemned them also to indigence. Rousseau was not to be moved. His new reputation as an author caused him to be sought by the most chosen societies of Paris; his idea of adapting his manners and life to his theories gave piquancé to his appearance and society. "I avow," he says, in his second letter to M. de Malesherbes, "that the name I acquired by my writings greatly facilitated the plan I adopted. It was necessary that I should be thought a good author, to become with impunity a bad copyist, and to find work notwithstanding; without the first title, I might have been disregarded in the other; and though I can easily brave ridicule, I should have supported contempt with difficulty." As it was, all he did seemed to increase his reputation. He was considered eccentric,--but he was sought as a man of genius.

[Sidenote: 1750. Ætat. 38.]