[49] M. d’Aubonne.

[50] Conf., iii 192.

[51] M. Gatier.

[52] M. Gaime.

[53] Conf., iii. 204.

[54] Ib. iii. 209, 210.

[55] Conf., iii. 217-222.

[56] Conf., iv. 227.

[57] Ib. iii. 224.

[58] One Venture de Villeneuve, who visited him years afterwards (1755) in Paris, when Rousseau found that the idol of old days was a crapulent debauchee. Ib. viii. 221.

[59] Mdlles. de Graffenried and Galley. Conf., iv. 231.

[60] Ib. iv. 254-256.

[61] Conf., iv. 253.

[62] While in the ambassador’s house at Soleure, he was lodged in a room which had once belonged to his namesake, Jean Baptiste Rousseau (b. 1670—­d. 1741), whom the older critics astonishingly insist on counting the first of French lyric poets.  There was a third Rousseau, Pierre [b. 1725—­d. 1785], who wrote plays and did other work now well forgotten.  There are some lines imperfectly commemorative of the trio—­

Trois auteurs que Rousseau l’on nomme, Connus de Paris jusqu’a Rome,
Sont differens; voici par ou; Rousseau de Paris fut grand homme;
Rousseau de Geneve est un fou; Rousseau de Toulouse un atome.

Jean Jacques refers to both his namesakes in his letter to Voltaire,
Jan. 30, 1750. Corr., i. 145.

[63] The only object which ever surpassed his expectation was the great Roman structure near Nismes, the Pont du Gard. Conf., vi. 446.

[64] Rousseau gives 1732 as the probable date of his return to Chamberi, after his first visit to Paris [Conf., v. 305], and the only objection to this is his mention of the incident of the march of the French troops, which could not have happened until the winter of 1733, as having taken place “some months” after his arrival.  Musset-Pathay accepts this as decisive, and fixes the return in the spring of 1733 [i. 12].  My own conjectural chronology is this:  Returns from Turin towards the autumn of 1729; stays at Annecy until the spring of 1731; passes the winter of 1731-2 at Neuchatel; first visits Paris in spring of 1732; returns to Savoy in the early summer of 1732.  But a precise harmonising of the dates in the Confessions is impossible; Rousseau wrote them three and thirty years after our present point [in 1766 at Wootton], and never claimed to be exact in minuteness of date.  Fortunately such matters in the present case are absolutely devoid of importance.

[65] Conf., iv. 279, 280.

[66] Conf., iv. 290, 291,

[67] Conf., iv. 281-283.

[68] Conf., v. 325.

[69] Conf., v. 360-364. Corr., i. 21-24.

[70] Conf., v. 349, 350.

[71] Apparently in the summer of 1736, though, the reference to the return of the French troops at the peace [Ib. v. 365] would place it in 1735.