gave a zest to the royal visit, as being a successful piece of sport in
that great spiritual hunt which Savoy loved to pursue at the expense of
the reformed church in Switzerland. The king, to mark his zeal for the
faith of his house, conferred on the new convert a small pension for
life; but as the tongues of the scandalous imputed a less pure motive
for such generosity in a parsimonious prince, Madame de Warens removed
from the court and settled at Annecy. Her conversion was hardly more
serious than Rousseau's own, because seriousness was no condition of her
intelligence on any of its sides or in any of its relations. She was
extremely charitable to the poor, full of pity for all in misfortune,
easily moved to forgiveness of wrong or ingratitude; careless, gay,
open-hearted; having, in a word, all the good qualities which spring in
certain generous soils from human impulse, and hardly any of those which
spring from reflection, or are implanted by the ordering of society. Her
reason had been warped in her youth by an instructor of the devil's
stamp;[41] finding her attached to her husband and to her duties, always
cold, argumentative, and impregnable on the side of the senses, he
attacked her by sophisms, and at last persuaded her that the union of
the sexes is in itself a matter of the most perfect indifference,
provided only that decorum of appearance be preserved, and the peace of
mind of persons concerned be not disturbed.[42] This execrable lesson,
which greater and more unselfish men held and propagated in grave books
before the end of the century, took root in her mind. If we accept
Rousseau's explanation, it did so the more easily as her temperament was
cold, and thus corroborated the idea of the indifference of what public
opinion and private passion usually concur in investing with such
enormous weightiness. "I will even dare to say," Rousseau declares,
"that she only knew one true pleasure in the world, and that was to give
pleasure to those whom she loved."[43] He is at great pains to protest
how compatible this coolness of temperament is with excessive