The Confessions

  I sent the piece off without speaking of it to anyone else except, I think, to Grimm, with whom I began to be on intimate terms after his entry into the Count de Frièse’s* house. He had a clavichord which brought us together, and at which I spent all my free moments with him, singing Italian airs and barcarolles, without pause or intermission from morning till evening, or rather from evening till morning; and if I was not to be found at M. Dupin’s I was certain to be discovered at M. Grimm’s, or at least in his company, either out for a walk or at the theatre. I gave up going to the Comédie-Italienne, at which I had a pass but which he did not like, and paid to go to the Comédie-Française, of which he was very fond. At length I became so firmly attached to this young man and we became so inseparable that even poor ‘aunt’ was neglected. That is to say that I saw less of her, for never in the whole of my life has my affection for her diminished.

  This impossibility of dividing the little spare time I had in the way that I should have liked, renewed and gave added strength to a desire which I had long felt to share an establishment with Thérèse. But the drawback of her numerous family and, what was more, the lack of money to buy furniture had hitherto deterred me. The opportunity of making an effort occurred and I took advantage of it. M. de Francueil and Mme Dupin realized that eight or nine hundred francs a year could not possibly be sufficient for me, and increased my salary of their own accord to fifty louis; and, furthermore, when Mme Dupin learned that I wanted to furnish my rooms she gave me some additional help towards this. Taking the furniture which Thérèse already had, we put everything together, and rented a few rooms in the Hôtel de Languedoc, in the Rue de Grenelle-Saint-Honoré, which was kept by very nice people. We settled in as comfortably as we could, and stayed there peacefully and pleasantly until my move to the Hermitage.

  Thérèse’s father was a very mild old fellow and extremely frightened of his wife whom he had nicknamed The Hanging Judge,† a title which Grimm subsequently transferred to her daughter. Mme Le Vasseur was not without intelligence, that is to say shrewdness; she even prided herself on her civility and worldly manners. But she had a mysterious wheedling tone that I found unbearable and was always misadvising her daughter, and trying to make her dishonest with me. She also tried to set each of my friends separately against each other and against myself. In other respects she was a fairly good mother because she found it paid her to be so, and concealed her daughter’s faults because she profited by them. But though I loaded the woman with cares and attentions and little presents and did all I could to gain her affection, because of my utter inability to do so she was the one cause of trouble in my little establishment. Otherwise I can say that during those six or seven years I enjoyed the most perfect domestic happiness that human frailty permits. Thérèse had the heart of an angel; our affection grew with our intimacy, and we felt more strongly every day that we were made for one another. If our pleasures could be described, their very simplicity would appear absurd: our walks, alone together, outside the town where I munificently spent eight or ten sous at a beer house; our little suppers at the open window, sitting opposite one another on two low chairs placed on a trunk which was as wide as the embrasure. In this position the window ledge served us as a table, we breathed the fresh air, we could see the distant country and the passers-by and, even though we were on the fourth floor, we looked down into the street as we ate. Who can describe, who can feel, the charm of these meals at which the dishes consisted of no more than a quartern loaf of coarse bread, a few cherries, a little piece of cheese, and half a pint of wine which we drank between us? Friendship, confidence, intimacy, peace of mind, what delicious seasonings they make! Sometimes we sat there till midnight without noticing it, and would never have thought of the time unless informed of it by the old lady. But let us leave these details, which will seem tame or ludicrous. For I have always said and felt that true joy defies description.

  At about this same time I indulged in a cruder pleasure, the last of its kind with which I have to reproach myself. I have said that Klupffel the minister was a pleasant fellow; my relationship with him was almost as close as with Grimm, and became equally intimate. Sometimes they dined with me. These meals, which were rather more than simple, were enlivened by Klupffel’s wild and witty remarks and by the coarse and German humour of Grimm, who had not yet turned purist. Luxury did not preside at our little orgies; but gaiety made up for it, and we so enjoyed each other’s company that we could never break the party up. Klupffel had furnished some rooms for a little girl who, however, remained at everyone’s disposal because he could not entirely keep her himself. One evening, on going into a café, we met him coming out on his way to sup with her. We chaffed him, and he took a gallant revenge by inviting us to share their supper, at which he chaffed us in his turn. The poor creature seemed to me of a fairly good disposition, very gentle and ill-adapted to her profession, for which an old witch who lived with her did her best to groom her. The excellent Klupffel did not want to do the honours by halves, and we all three went in turn into the next room with the little girl, who did not know whether to laugh or to cry. Grimm has always sworn that he never touched her; it was only for the pleasure of making us impatient that he stayed with her so long; but if he refrained it is not very likely that it was out of any scruples, for before he went to the Count de Frièse he had lived in a brothel in this same Saint-Roch quarter.

  I left the Rue des Moineaux, where the girl lived, feeling as ashamed as Saint-Preux when he left the house where he had been made drunk, and I vividly remembered my own story when I wrote his. Thérèse perceived from certain signs, though principally from my air of confusion, that I had something on my mind; I relieved myself of my guilty conscience by a free and frank confession. It was as well. For next day Grimm came in triumph to give her an exaggerated account of my offence, and since then he has never failed maliciously to remind her of it, which is the more reprehensible in him since I had taken him freely and voluntarily into my confidence and had therefore the right to expect that he would not make me repent it. Never was I more conscious than on that occasion of my Thérèse’s goodness of heart; for she was more shocked by Grimm’s behaviour than by my infidelity, and I received nothing from her but touching and tender reproaches, in which I never perceived the slightest trace of anger.

  That good girl’s kindness of heart was equalled only by her simple-mindedness, which tells the whole story. But one example that occurs to me is nevertheless worth adding. I had told her that Klupffel was a minister and chaplain to the Prince of Saxe-Gotha. A minister was so extraordinary a person in her eyes that, muddling up two quite unrelated ideas, she took it into her head that Klupffel was the Pope. I thought she was mad the first time she told me, on my coming home, that the Pope had come to see me. I made her explain, and went off at top speed to tell this story to Grimm and Klupffel. Ever afterwards he was known amongst us as the Pope, and we called the girl in the Rue des Moineaux Pope Joan. We could not control our laughter; we almost choked. Whoever made me say, in a letter that someone has been pleased to attribute to me, that I have only laughed twice in my life, did not know me at that time, nor in my youth, or that idea would certainly never have entered his head.

  1750–1752 In the following year (1750) when I had given up thinking about my essay I learned that it had won the prize at Dijon. The news reawakened all the ideas that it had suggested to me, endowed them with fresh vigour, and set that first leavening of heroism and virtue working in my heart that my father, my native land, and Plutarch had implanted there in my childhood. I could no longer see any greatness or beauty except in being free and virtuous, superior to fortune and man’s opinion, and independent of all external circumstances. Although false shame and a fear of opprobrium prevented me at first from acting on these principles and from openly defying the conventions of my age, my mind was made up from that moment, and I only delayed the execution of my resolve until such time as contradiction provoked it and rendered it victorious.


  Whilst I was philosophizing on the duties of man an event occurred which made me reflect more deeply upon my own. Thérèse became pregnant for the third time. Too sincere with myself, too proud in my heart, to be willing to belie my principles by my actions, I began to consider the fate of my children and my relationship with their mother, by reference to the laws of nature, justice, and reason, and of that religion – pure, sacred, and eternal as its Author – which men have soiled whilst pretending they were trying to purify it, and which they have turned by their formulas into no more than a religion of words, seeing that it is not costly to prescribe the impossible if you excuse yourself from performing it.

  If I was mistaken in my conclusions, nothing can be more remarkable than the calm spirit in which I surrendered to them. If I were one of those low-born men, deaf to the gentle voice of Nature, a man in whose breast no real feeling of justice and humanity ever arose, this hardness of heart would have been quite easy to explain. But my warm-heartedness, my acute sensibility, the ease with which I formed friendships, the hold they exercised over me, and the cruel wrench when they had to be broken; my innate goodwill towards my fellow men; my burning love for the great, the true, the beautiful, and the just; my horror of evil in every form, my inability to hate, to hurt, or even to wish to; that softening, that sharp and sweet emotion I feel at the sight of all that is virtuous, generous, and lovable: is it possible that all these can ever dwell in the same soul along with depravity which, quite unscrupulously, tramples the dearest of obligations underfoot? No, I feel, and boldly declare – it is impossible. Never for a moment in his life could Jean-Jacques have been a man without feelings or compassion, an unnatural father. I may have been mistaken, but I could never be callous. If I were to state my reasons, I should say too much. For since they were strong enough to seduce me, they would seduce many others; and I do not wish to expose any young people who may read me to the risk of being misled by the same error. I will be content with a general statement that in handing my children over for the State to educate, for lack of means to bring them up myself, by destining them to become workers and peasants instead of adventurers and fortune-hunters, I thought I was acting as a citizen and a father, and looked upon myself as a member of Plato’s Republic. More than once since then the regret in my heart has told me that I was wrong. But far from my reason having told me the same story, I have often blessed Heaven for having thus safeguarded them from their father’s fate, and from that which would have overtaken them at the moment when I should have been compelled to abandon them. If I had left them to Mme d’Épinay or to Mme de Luxembourg who, out of friendship or generosity, or from some other motive, offered to take charge of them at a later date, would they have been happier, would they have been brought up at least as honest people? I do not know; but I am sure that they would have been led to hate, and perhaps to betray, their parents. It is a hundred times better that they have never known them.

  My third child, therefore was taken to the Foundling Hospital like the others, and the next two were disposed of in the same way, for I had five in all. This arrangement seemed so good and sensible and right to me that if I did not boast of it openly it was solely out of regard for their mother. But I told everyone whom I had told of our relationship; I told Diderot and Grimm. Later I informed Mme d’Épinay, and still later Mme de Luxembourg, and this freely, frankly, and under no kind of compulsion, at a time when I might easily have concealed the matter from everybody; for Mlle Gouin was an honest woman and most discreet, and I could utterly rely upon her. The only one of my friends in whom I had some reason to confide was Thierry the doctor, who attended my poor ‘aunt’ in one of her confinements during which she was very ill. In a word, I made no mystery about my conduct, not only because I have never been able to conceal anything from my friends, but because I really saw nothing wrong in it. All things considered, I made the best choice for my children, or what I thought was the best. I could have wished, and still do wish, that I had been brought up and nurtured as they have been.

  Whilst I made my confidences in my way, Mme Le Vasseur did the same in hers, but from far less disinterested motives. I had introduced her and her daughter to Mme Dupin, who out of friendship to me had done them many kindnesses. The mother let her into the daughter’s secret. Mme Dupin is kind and generous, and Mme Le Vasseur did not tell her how carefully I provided for everything despite the modesty of my resources. She therefore made some provision herself with a liberality which Thérèse always concealed from me, on her mother’s orders, all the while I was in Paris, and which she only admitted to me at the Hermitage, as a sequel to several other confessions. I did not know that Mme Dupin, who never showed the least sign of being so, was so well informed; and I do not know to this day whether her daughter-in-law, Mme de Chenonceaux, knew also. But Mme de Francueil, her stepdaughter, certainly did and could not keep quiet. She talked about it to me in the next year, when I had already left their house. This compelled me to write her a letter on the subject, which will be found in my collection. In it I reveal such of my reasons as I could give without compromising Mme Le Vasseur and her family; for the most decisive of them came from that quarter, and about those I was silent.*

  I can rely on Mme Dupin’s discretion and on Mme de Chenonceaux’s friendship; I was also able to trust Mme de Francueil who, anyhow, died long before my secret was noised abroad. It could never have been disclosed except by those in whom I had confided, and indeed it was not until after my break with them that it became public. By that fact alone they are judged. Without wishing to disown the blame which I deserve, I would rather have that on my conscience than have to answer, like them, for sheer maliciousness. My fault is great, but it was an error; I neglected my duties, but the desire to do harm never entered my head, and a father’s feelings cannot speak very loudly for children he has never seen. But to betray a friend’s confidences, to violate the most sacred of all bonds, to publish secrets entrusted to our bosom, deliberately to dishonour the friends we have deceived and who still respect us as they say good-bye – those are not faults; they are utter baseness and infamy.

  I have promised to write my confessions, but not to make my apologies; so I will stop here. My duty is to tell the truth; my readers’ to be just, and that is all that I shall ever ask of them.

  M. de Chenonceaux’s marriage made his mother’s house still more pleasant to me, for his bride was very witty and accomplished. She was a most charming young person and seemed to single me out from amongst M. Dupin’s secretaries. She was the only daughter of the Viscountess de Rochechouart, a great friend of the Count de Frièse, and consequently also of Grimm, who was very fond of her. It was I, however, who introduced him to her daughter; but their temperaments did not agree and their acquaintance came to nothing. Grimm, who from that time aimed at solid success, preferred the mother, who was a society woman, to the daughter, who wanted steady friends that were agreeable to her, rather than men who meddled in intrigues or tried to ingratiate themselves with the great. Mme Dupin did not find all the docility in Mme de Chenonceaux that she expected, and made the house a melancholy place for her; and Mme de Chenonceaux, priding herself on her merits and perhaps on her birth, preferred to renounce the charms of society and stay almost alone in her apartment, rather than bear a yoke which she thought unbefitting to her. This sort of exile increased my affection for her, because of the natural inclination that draws me to the unhappy. I found in her a metaphysical and thoughtful mind, sometimes a little prone to sophistry. Her conversation, which was far from being that of a young woman who has just left her convent, was most attractive to me; and yet she was still under twenty. Her skin was dazzlingly fair; her figure would have been tall and fine if she had held herself better; her hair, which was ash blonde and of uncommon beauty, reminded me of Mamma’s in her prime, and sent a tremor to my heart. But the strict principles which I had just adopted and which I was resolved to adhere to at all costs, secured me from her and her charms. For a w
hole summer I spent three or four hours a day alone with her, solemnly teaching her arithmetic and boring her with my eternal figures, without uttering a single compliment or throwing her an admiring glance. Five or six years later I should neither have been so wise nor so foolish; but it was decreed that I should only be in love once in my life, and that another than she should receive the first and last sighs of my heart.

  Since I had been living at Mme Dupin’s I had always been content with my lot, and betrayed no desire to see it improved. The increase which she had made in my salary, jointly with M. de Francueil, had come entirely of their own accord. In this year M. de Francueil, whose friendship for me increased with the days, wanted to make me a little more comfortable, and my position less precarious. He was Receiver-General of Finances. His cashier, M. Dudoyer, was old and rich, and wanted to retire. M. de Francueil offered me his place and, in order to fit myself to fill it, I went for some weeks to M. Dudoyer to receive the necessary instructions. But whether because I had little talent for such employment or because Dudoyer, who seemed to me to have his eye on someone else as his successor, did not give me honest instruction, I acquired the necessary knowledge slowly and imperfectly, and I was never able to get into my head the whole state of the accounts, which had been deliberately muddled. However, without grasping the intricacies of the subject, I did not fail to master the ordinary routine sufficiently to be able to undertake the management competently. I even took over the duties. I kept the ledgers and the cash; I paid out and took in money and gave receipts; and though I had no more liking than talent for this occupation, mature years were beginning to make me wise, and 1 determined to conquer my repugnance and to devote myself entirely to my duties. Unfortunately, just as I was beginning to get used to them, M. de Francueil took a short journey, during the course of which I was in charge of his cashbox, which, however, did not contain at the time more than twenty-five or thirty thousand francs. The care and disquietude which this responsibility cost me made me conscious that I was not born to be a cashier; and I have no doubt that the impatience I felt during his absence contributed to the illness that attacked me after he returned.