serious reason. In her flight she had left her husband and abjured her
religion. In morals she had a system of her own, and gave herself to
many men, without interested motives, but with little passion. She was a
sentimental, active-minded woman, of small judgment; pleasing rather
than beautiful, short of stature, thickset, but with a fine head and
arms. Madame de Warens received the boy kindly, and on this first
occasion of their meeting did little more than speed him on his way to
Turin, where he entered a monastery for the express purpose of being
converted to Catholicism. In nine days the farce was completed, and the
new Catholic turned out into the town, with about twenty francs of small
change in his pocket, charitably contributed by the witnesses of the
ceremony of his abjuration. It is needless to dwell on his adventures at
this time. He was a servant in two different families. After something
more than a year he left Turin on foot, and wandered back to Annecy and
to Madame de Warens.

The period of Rousseau's life in which that lady was the ruling
influence lasted ten or twelve years. The situation was one from which
any man of manly instincts would have shrunk, a condition of dependence
on a mistress, and on a mistress who made no pretense of fidelity. In a
desultory way Rousseau learned something of music at this time, and made
some long journeys on foot, one of them taking him as far as Paris. This
man, morally of soft fibre, was able to endure and enjoy moderate
physical hardship; and from early education felt most at home in simple
houses and amid rude surroundings. At last, disgusted with the
appearance of a new rival in Madame de Warens's changeable household,
Rousseau left that lady and drifted off to Lyons; then, after once
trying the experiment of returning to his mistress and finding it a
failure, to Paris.