Montmorency, 17th December 1757.

“Nothing, madam, is so natural and necessary as to leave your house the moment you no longer approve of my remaining there.  Upon you refusing your consent to my passing the rest of the winter at the Hermitage I quitted it on the fifteenth of December.  My destiny was to enter it in spite of myself and to leave it the same.  I thank you for the residence you prevailed upon me to make there, and I would thank you still more had I paid for it less dear.  You are right in believing me unhappy; nobody upon earth knows better than yourself to what a degree I must be so.  If being deceived in the choice of our friends be a misfortune, it is another not less cruel to recover from so pleasing an error.”

Such is the faithful narrative of my residence at the Hermitage, and of the reasons which obliged me to leave it.  I could not break off the recital, it was necessary to continue it with the greatest exactness; this epoch of my life having had upon the rest of it an influence which will extend to my latest remembrance.

THE CONFESSIONS OF JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU (In 12 books)

Privately Printed for the Members of the Aldus Society

London, 1903

BOOK X.

The extraordinary degree of strength a momentary effervescence had given me to quit the Hermitage, left me the moment I was out of it.  I was scarcely established in my new habitation before I frequently suffered from retentions, which were accompanied by a new complaint; that of a rupture, from which I had for some time, without knowing what it was, felt great inconvenience.  I soon was reduced to the most cruel state.  The physician Thieiry, my old friend, came to see me, and made me acquainted with my situation.  The sight of all the apparatus of the infirmities of years, made me severely feel that when the body is no longer young, the heart is not so with impunity.  The fine season did not restore me, and I passed the whole year, 1758, in a state of languor, which made me think I was almost at the end of my career.  I saw, with impatience, the closing scene approach.  Recovered from the chimeras of friendship, and detached from everything which had rendered life desirable to me, I saw nothing more in it that could make it agreeable; all I perceived was wretchedness and misery, which prevented me from enjoying myself.  I sighed after the moment when I was to be free and escape from my enemies.  But I must follow the order of events.