and telling his beads, in a word, a kind of missionary, who thought the height of merit consisted in writing libels against the ministers of Geneva.  Far from wishing to send me back, he endeavored to favor my escape, and put it out of my power to return even had I been so disposed.  It was a thousand to one but he was sending me to perish with hunger, or become a villain; but all this was foreign to his purpose; he saw a soul snatched from heresy, and restored to the bosom of the church:  whether I was an honest man or a knave was very immaterial, provided I went to mass.

This ridiculous mode of thinking is not peculiar to Catholics; it is the voice of every dogmatical persuasion where merit consists in belief, and not in virtue.

“You are called by the Almighty,” said M. de Pontverre; “go to Annecy, where you will find a good and charitable lady, whom the bounty of the king enables to turn souls from those errors she has happily renounced.”  He spoke of a Madam de Warrens, a new convert, to whom the priests contrived to send those wretches who were disposed to sell their faith, and with these she was in a manner constrained to share a pension of two thousand francs bestowed on her by the King of Sardinia.  I felt myself extremely humiliated at being supposed to want the assistance of a good and charitable lady.  I had no objection to be accommodated with everything I stood in need of, but did not wish to receive it on the footing of charity and to owe this obligation to a devotee was still worse; notwithstanding my scruples the persuasions of M. de Pontverre, the dread of perishing with hunger, the pleasures I promised myself from the journey, and hope of obtaining some desirable situation, determined me; and I set out though reluctantly, for Annecy.  I could easily have reached it in a day, but being in no great haste to arrive there, it took me three.  My head was filled with the ideas of adventures, and I approached every country-seat I saw in my way, in expectation of having them realized.  I had too much timidity to knock at the doors, or even enter if I saw them open, but I did what I dared—­which was to sing under those windows that I thought had the most favorable appearance; and was very much disconcerted to find I wasted my breath to no purpose, and that neither old nor young ladies were attracted by the melody of my voice, or the wit of my poetry, though some songs my companions had taught me I thought excellent and that I sung them incomparably.  At length I arrived at Annecy, and saw Madam de Warrens.

As this period of my life, in a great measure, determined my character, I could not resolve to pass it lightly over.  I was in the middle of my sixteenth year, and though I could not be called handsome, was well made for my height; I had a good foot, a well turned leg, and animated countenance; a well proportioned mouth, black hair and eyebrows, and my eyes, though small and rather too far in my head, sparkling with