For more than eight years after his final separation from Madame de
Warens, Rousseau did nothing to make any one suppose him to be a man of
genius. He obtained and threw up the position of secretary to the French
ambassador at Venice; he supported himself as a musician and as a
private secretary; he lived from hand to mouth, having as a companion
one Therese Levasseur, a grotesquely illiterate maid servant, picked up
at an inn. Their five children he successively took to the Foundling,
losing sight of them forever. To the mother he was faithful for the most
part, although not without some amorous wanderings, for many years.

Up to 1749, then, when Rousseau was thirty-seven years old, he had
published nothing of importance. He had, however, some acquaintance
with literary men, being known merely as one of those adventurers
without any settled means of existence, who may always be found in
cities, and with whom Paris at this time appears to have been
over-furnished. In features he was plain, in manners awkward; much
given to making compliments to women, but generally displeasing to
them, although at times interesting when roused to excitement. The
Swiss Jean Jacques had little of the sparkling wit which the Frenchmen
of his day rated very high, but he had much subtlety of observation
and many ideas. He constantly applauded himself in his writings on
being sensible rather than witty. In fact he was neither, but very
ingenious and eloquent. In character he was self-indulgent but not
luxurious, sensitive, vain, and sentimental. To this man,--if we may
believe his own account, and I think in the main we may do so,--there
came by a sudden flash an idea which altered his whole life, and which
has materially affected millions of lives since he died. The idea was
an evil seed, and it found an evil soil to grow in.

The summer of 1749 was a hot one. Diderot, just rising into notice as a