Volume 1

Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau / Jean Jacques Rousseau.

  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Date:
1931
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau / Jean Jacques Rousseau. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    endure it no longer, and came to Geneva to see me. This time my head was completely turned ; I was drunk ana mad during the ; two days she remained. When she left I wanted to throw myself in the water after her, and the air resounded with my screams. 1 Eight days afterwards she sent me some bonbons and gloves, i which I should have considered a great compliment, if I had not learnt at the same time that she was married, and that the visit i with which she had been pleased to honour me was really made in order to buy her wedding-dress. I will not attempt to describe my fury ; it may be imagined. In my noble rage I swore that I would never see the faithless one again, being unable to imagine a more terrible punishment for her. She did not, however, die of it; for, twenty years afterwards, when on a visit to my father, while rowing with him on the lake, I asked who the ladies were whom I saw in a boat not far from ours. “ What ! ” said my father with a smile, “ does not your heart tell you ? it is your old love, Mademoiselle de Vulson that was, now Madame Cristin.” I started at the almost forgotten name, but I told the boatmen to change their course. Although I had a fine opportunity of aveng¬ ing myself at that moment, I did not think it worth while to perjure myself and to renew a quarrel, twenty years old, with a woman of forty. [1723-1728].—-Thusthe most valuable time of my boyhood was wasted in follies, before my future career had been decided upon. After long deliberation as to the bent of my natural inclination, a profession was determined upon for which I had the least taste ; I was put with M. Masseron, the town clerk, in order to learn, under his tuition, the useful trade of a fee-grabber.1 This nickname was extremely distasteful to me ; the hope of gaining a number of crowns in a somewhat sordid business by no means flattered my pride ; the occupation itself appeared to me wearisome and un¬ endurable ; the constant application, the feeling of servitude completed my dislike, and I never entered the office without a feeling of horror, which daily increased in intensity. M. Masseron, on his part, was ill-satisfied with me, and treated me with contempt; he continually reproached me with my dulness and stupidity, dinning into my ears every day that my uncle had told him that I knew something, whereas, in reality, I knew nothing ; that he had promised him a sharp lad, and had given him a jackass. At last I was dismissed from the office in disgrace as being utterly incapable, and M. Masseron’s clerks declared that I was good for nothing except to handle a file. 1 Grapignan : a slang term for a lawyer.