by a generous and erring woman of wealth lately converted to
Catholicism; and again by the priests of a Catholic Seminary in
Sardinia, under whose tuition, and in order to advance his personal
fortunes, he abjured the religion in which he had been brought up, and
professed Catholicism. This, however, cost him no conscientious
scruples, for his religious training had been of the slimmest, and
principles he had none.

We next see Rousseau as a footman in the service of an Italian Countess,
where he was mean enough to accuse a servant girl of a theft he had
himself committed, thereby causing her ruin. Again, employed as a
footman in the service of another noble family, his extraordinary
talents were detected, and he was made secretary. But all this kindness
he returned with insolence, and again became a wanderer. In his
isolation he sought the protection of the Swiss lady who had before
befriended him, Madame de Warens. He began as her secretary, and ended
in becoming her lover. In her house he saw society and learned music.

A fit of caprice induced Rousseau to throw up this situation, and he
then taught music in Chambéry for a living, studied hard, read Voltaire,
Descartes, Locke, Hobbes, Leibnitz, and Puffendorf, and evinced an
uncommon vivacity and talent for conversation, which made him a favorite
in social circles. His chief labor, however, for five years was in
inventing a system of musical notation, which led him to Lyons, and
then, in 1741, to Paris.

He was now twenty-nine years old,--a visionary man, full of schemes,
with crude opinions and unbounded self-conceit, but poor and unknown,--a
true adventurer, with many agreeable qualities, irregular habits, and
not very scrupulous morals. Favored by letters of introduction to ladies