ROUSSEAU.

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built and well-peopled streets filled him with hopes forthe future. Where there were so many rich and great,there could not fail, he thought, to he found a thousandeligible resources against want.

The resources he really found were in ill accord withthe pictures his imagination formed. He was obligedto hire himself as a servant. At first he served a fairshopkeeper; and then became the attendant of an oldcountess Vercelli, with whom he lived till her death,which occurred only three months after. It was onthis occasion that he committed that fault, remorse forwhich pursued him till his death. During the illnessof his mistress he had abstracted a riband from herwardrobe, with the intent of bestowing it on a maid-servant of the house. The riband was missed, soughtfor, and found on him. False shame led him to denythe theft; and, when more closely questioned, he declaredthat the stolen riband had been given to him by the verygirl on whom he had intended to bestow it. The two wereconfronted; the innocent servant implored him with tearsto retract his falsehood, but he resolutely maintainedhis story. He was believed. He tells this tale in his“ Confessions;” he declares that the avowal cost him morepain than any other—-that remorse never ceased to pur-sue him—the image of the injured girl, reproaching himfor the wrong he had done her, often haunted his dreams—it weighed on his conscience as the most atrociouscrime. He had sought merely to shelter himself, andfalse shame prevented his retracting the accusation oncemade; but the thought of his victim driven to want andinfamy by his lie made him often look on his after suffer-ings as but the just retribution of his crime. This is oneof the laws of life. The shadows of our past actions stalkbeside us during our existence, and never cease to tormentor to soothe, according as they are ill or good, thatmysterious portion of mind termed conscience.

Rousseau was now again thrown back upon inde-pendent poverty. His time was not all lost: he fre-quented the society of an excellent man, a Savoyard I 4