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.

    338/344 (page 318)
    that of her step-sister, Mademoiselle de Bellegarde, who soon afterwards became Comtesse de Houdetot. When I first saw her, it was just before her marriage, and she conversed with me for a long time with that charming familiarity which is natural to her. I found her very amiable; but I was far from foreseeing that this young person would one day decide the destiny of my life, and was fated to drag me down, although innocently, into the abyss in which I find myself to-day. Although, since my return from Venice, I have not spoken of Diderot, or my friend Roguin, I had not neglected either, and with the former especially I had daily grown more and more intimate. He had a Nanette, just as I had a Therese : this was a further point of agreement between us. But the difference was, that my Therese, who was at least as good-looking as his Nanette, was of a gentle disposition and an amiable character, calculated to gain the attachment of an honourable man, while his Nanette, who was a regular shrew and a fish-fag, exhibited no redeeming qualities which could compensate, in the eyes of others, for her defective education. However, he married her, which was very praiseworthy, if he had promised to do so. As for myself, having made no promise of the kind, I was in no hurry to imitate him. I had also become connected with the Abbe de Condillac, who, like myself, was unknown in the literary world, but was destined to become what he is at the present day. I was, per¬ haps, the first who discovered his abilities, and estimated him at his proper value. He also seemed to have taken a fancy to me; and while, shut up in my room in the Rue Jean-Saint-Denis, near the Opera, I was composing my act of Hesiode, he some¬ times dined with me tete-a-tete, and we shared the expenses. He was at that time engaged upon his “ Essai sur l’Origine des Connaissances humaines,” his first work. When it was finished, the difficulty was to find a bookseller to take it. The booksellers of Paris are always arrogant and hard towards a new author, and metaphysics, which was not much in fashion at the time, did not offer a very attractive subject. I spoke of Condillac and his work to Diderot, and introduced them to each other. They were made to suit each other, and did so. Diderot induced Durant the bookseller to accept the Abbe’s manuscript, and this great metaphysician received for his first book—and that almost as a favour—one hundred crowns, and even that he would perhaps not have received but for me. As we lived at a