afterwards only make a way out by heroic efforts that stupefy us, and so we sink into the abyss, crying aloud to God, Why hast thou made me so weak?  But in spite of ourselves, God gives answer to our conscience, ’I made thee too weak to come out from the pit, because I made thee strong enough to avoid falling into it.’"[28] So the hopeful convert did fall in, not as happens to the pious soul “too hot for certainties in this our life,” to find rest in liberty of private judgment and an open Bible, but simply as a means of getting food, clothing, and shelter.[29] The boy was clever enough to make some show of resistance, and he turned to good use for this purpose the knowledge of Church history and the great Reformation controversy which he had picked up at M. Lambercier’s.  He was careful not to carry things too far, and exactly nine days after his admission into the Hospice, he “abjured the errors of the sect."[30] Two days after that he was publicly received into the kindly bosom of the true Church with all solemnity, to the high edification of the devout of Turin, who marked their interest in the regenerate soul by contributions to the extent of twenty francs in small money.

With that sum and formal good wishes the fathers of the Hospice of the Catechumens thrust him out of their doors into the broad world.  The youth who had begun the day with dreams of palaces, found himself at night sleeping in a den where he paid a halfpenny for the privilege of resting in the same room with the rude woman who kept the house, her husband, her five or six children, and various other lodgers.  This rough awakening produced no consciousness of hardship in a nature which, beneath all fantastic dreams, always remained true to its first sympathy with the homely lives of the poor.  The woman of the house swore like a carter, and was always dishevelled and disorderly:  this did not prevent Rousseau from recognising her kindness of heart and her staunch readiness to befriend.  He passed his days in wandering about the streets of Turin, seeing the wonders of a capital, and expecting some adventure that should raise him to unknown heights.  He went regularly to mass, watched the pomp of the court, and counted upon stirring a passion in the breast of a princess.  A more important circumstance was the effect of the mass in awakening in his own breast his latent passion for music; a passion so strong that the poorest instrument, if it were only in tune, never failed to give him the liveliest pleasure.  The king of Sardinia was believed to have the best performers in Europe; less than that was enough to quicken the musical susceptibility which is perhaps an invariable element in the most completely sensuous natures.

When the end of the twenty francs began to seem a thing possible, he tried to get work as an engraver.  A young woman in a shop took pity on him, gave him work and food, and perhaps permitted him to make dumb and grovelling love to her, until her husband returned home and drove her client away from the door with threats and the waving of a wand not magical.[31] Rousseau’s self-love sought an explanation in the natural fury of an Italian husband’s jealousy; but we need hardly ask for any other cause than a shopkeeper’s reasonable objection to vagabonds.