THE CONFESSIONS OF JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
(In 12 books)

Privately Printed for the Members of the Aldus Society

London, 1903



BOOK XII.


With this book begins the work of darkness, in which I have for the last
eight years been enveloped, though it has not by any means been possible
for me to penetrate the dreadful obscurity. In the abyss of evil into
which I am plunged, I feel the blows reach me, without perceiving the
hand by which they are directed or the means it employs. Shame and
misfortune seem of themselves to fall upon me. When in the affliction of
my heart I suffer a groan to escape me, I have the appearance of a man
who complains without reason, and the authors of my ruin have the
inconceivable art of rendering the public unknown to itself, or without
its perceiving the effects of it, accomplice in their conspiracy.
Therefore, in my narrative of circumstances relative to myself, of the
treatment I have received, and all that has happened to me, I shall not
be able to indicate the hand by which the whole has been directed, nor
assign the causes, while I state the effect. The primitive causes are
all given in the preceding books; and everything in which I am
interested, and all the secret motives pointed out. But it is impossible
for me to explain, even by conjecture, that in which the different causes
are combined to operate the strange events of my life. If amongst my